Femmes Fatal

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Please …” Bunty dropped the phone with a terrifying thud. “Can’t we talk about this? Doctor, I didn’t kill that gift-wrapped baggage, but if you turn me in, I’m done for! Why look further for the murderer when I’m right there under everyone’s nose—with a motive sky-high?”

  “A difficult position to be in.” Some humanity had edged into Dr. Melrose’s rusty voice and Bunty immediately picked up on it. Her voice took on a wheedling tone and I detected a wiggle to her scarlet satin hips as she stepped up to him. “Doctor, dear, haven’t you ever found yourself in a situation where the whole world was about to cave in?” she pouted prettily up at him. “But you could be saved if someone would be sweet and kind and keep his … or her … bloomin’ mouth shut.”

  “Yes.” Voice of a robot.

  “So couldn’t you possibly”—Bunty reached out a hand to smooth down his coat collar—“couldn’t you find it in your heart to write out that death certificate, citing, say, a nasty old heart attack for finishing off dear Miss Thorn?”

  “If you insist.” As slowly and stiffly as the world spinning on its axis, Dr. Melrose turned to look at me, and the contempt I read in his eyes made my knees go wobbly. The man thought I had betrayed him to Bunty. He thought she knew about his attempt to dispose of his wife’s body and was now blackmailing him into silence. The enemy here was his guilty conscience because I hadn’t said a word to anyone, let alone Bunty, about the Flo fiasco. And Ben, having given his word, would definitely have kept mum. Which only left Flo … assuming she had regained her memory of the incident and had felt called upon to report it to Fully Female. So what now? Should I do my civic duty by whispering into the doctor’s ear that he had nothing to fear by picking up that telephone? Or should I remember the bond of fellowship between one Fully Female woman and another?

  When I went home that night to Merlin’s Court, I longed to run straight into Ben’s arms. But how could I seek shelter in that sweet haven when I felt like a criminal? Keeping quiet about my involvement with the death of Norman the Doorman had almost done me in, and my complicity in that regard was nothing in comparision to the role I had played tonight. Silence can be unbelievably foul-mouthed. I wouldn’t feel halfway right until I had gargled with salt water, but alas, the path to the bathroom was blocked by my husband standing guard at the top of the stairs.

  “There you are, sweetheart! I was starting to worry about you.” Many a man would have been taken for a ward orderly in those hospital-green pyjamas, but wouldn’t you know Ben looked as though he had been clipped from a fashion magazine featuring gentlemen’s loungewear. Every syllable of his concerned voice was a dagger through my heart. And deeper anguish was to follow when he drew me to him and lifted my hair out from under the collar of my coat. These last weeks had been a wasteland parched of passion, and now that love bloomed anew, I was cut off from it by a barbed-wire fence built of my own deceit. But did it have to be that way? Could I go on living in the same house with myself, let alone Ben, if I didn’t tell him I had joined Fully Female and where such folly had landed me? In a heady rush of relief I opened my mouth—all set to spill the beans—when an inner voice piped up: Great, Ellie! Unburden yourself by burdening him. Put Ben in an impossible position! Tell him that you stood silently by while Bunty persuaded Dr. Melrose to falsify the death certificate. Then leave the decision up to him. What will it be, Ben dear? Will you tear your heart out and cast it at my feet before shuffling sorrowfully down to the police station to report the whole sordid mess to a desk sergeant whose wife has just left him? Or will you bow to my woman’s intuition that Bunty is innocent and concede with a bittersweet smile that silence is golden and a murderer on the loose is a small price to pay for her freedom? Oh, my darling … gently prying myself loose from his arms … No marriage is an island.

  “Are you asleep?” Ben’s laugh rippled through my hair.

  “Almost.”

  “Must have been some party.”

  “The worst.”

  “Poor darling.”

  “How are the babies?” Head down, I followed him into our bedroom.

  “They were a little fretful on and off, but when I checked five minutes ago, they were sound asleep.”

  “Then I won’t go in and risk waking them.”

  His smile enfolded me. “Do I get a gold star for waiting up for you?”

  My throat closed and my eyes stung. How easy it would have been to drop my cares and woes in a pile on the floor along with my coat and let him lead me gently by the hand to the four-poster with the blankets turned down and sheets as smooth and cool as the feel of his skin under my wistful fingers. But it was no good. I would only hate myself in the morning. While I remained a fugitive from the law, Ben and I could not be Man and Wife in the sublime sense of the words, which on a positive note provided a pretty compelling reason for tracking down Miss Thorn’s killer on the double.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I put the bed between us. “Ben, I respect you too much to make love to you when I am in mourning.”

  “What?”

  “For Miss Thorn. She died tonight at Bunty’s party.”

  “By Jupiter!” Hand smacking his brow. “When you said the party wasn’t up to snuff, I thought you meant lousy food, which didn’t surprise me considering they didn’t ask me to cater it.” I knew what he was doing, of course. He was talking himself through the shock. “What a rotten business. What was it—a heart attack?”

  “That’s … that’s what Dr. Melrose wrote on the death certificate.”

  “Sweetheart!” Ben reached out for me, then withdrew, recognizing with that exquisite sensitivity of which I was so undeserving that I couldn’t bear to be touched. “Did she just keel over in the punch bowl?”

  “She was found in the Wisemans’ bedroom.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Mrs. Malloy and … I.”

  “Oh, my darling.”

  “The whole situation is rather a mess.” Somehow I managed to lift my head to see my misery mirrored in his eyes. “Lionel Wiseman was leaving Bunty for Miss Thorn.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Could I make up something like that?”

  “The announcement was made, out of the blue, at the party?”

  “Bunty knew it was coming.”

  “Whoa! Given the emotional climate, I’m surprised Miss Thorn was the only one whose heart gave out.”

  “Ben,” I said, sinking down on the bed, “I really am not up to talking about it.”

  “Sorry!” He stood over me, tenderness flowing from every pore until I was submerged in remorse and self-loathing. “I am an unfeeling brute to press you for details. Bed is the place for you, my love. As soon as I have you snuggled safe and sound under the bedclothes, I will go downstairs and fetch you some hot milk. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  A shudder passed through my body as Dr. Melrose’s gaunt image rose up to haunt me. Assuring Ben that I wanted nothing to drink, I went through the motions of getting ready for bed, and five minutes later, he turned off the light.

  “Good night, sweetheart.” He reached for my hand and I clung to his fingers until I felt him slip away into sleep. Lying on my back, staring into a darkness where the familiar shapes of daylight, the wardrobe and the dressing table, were transformed into hulking monsters from hell, I had never felt more alone. So how about it? Was I going to wallow or was I going to compose a file of suspects? Damn! Put like that, I squared my shoulders and waited for the lineup to parade before the window of my mind.

  First comes Miss Thorn herself. Look me in the eye, madam, and tell me whether you took your own life in a fit of remorse. Did you stick a cherry in your navel and drape yourself in plastic wrap in hopes that your beloved would always remember you as the ultimate dessert?

  Away flits Miss T and in her place stands the ever-handsome Lionel Wiseman. Did you, sir, have second thoughts about the engagement and decide to take the gentlemanly way out?

  An
d who comes next but Mr. and Mrs. Jock Bludgett. He licks his moustache and she epitomizes the old saying, Beware the woman with the perpetual smile. I haven’t forgotten that you, J.B., once engaged in an affair with the irresistible Gladys, providing you and your spouse with ample motives for murder. Yours is remorse, and Moll’s is good old-fashioned jealousy.

  Away with you both. Make room for the widowed Jacqueline Diamond. Excuse the question, dear lady, but was your husband’s recent demise the embarrassing misadventure you described to me? Or did you punch out his lights in the heat of quarrel, and upon realizing he was dead, stage the Fully Female scenario with you tied naked to the bed and he a crumpled cape upon the floor? Yes, Jacqueline, I know you made much of withholding the lurid details from the police, but was I the ace up your sleeve, to be produced in the event your story did not go over as planned? And what if Miss Thorn proved to be an unexpected fly in the ointment? I know she also resided on Rosewood Terrace. And I remember on the fateful evening noticing a light present in an upstairs room of the house across the road from yours. What if that were Miss Thorn’s house and she just happened to be doing some bird-watching from her window at precisely the wrong moment and casually mentioned sometime later that she had seen you bump off Norman?

  Fade out Jacqueline. My goodness, it’s Mr. Walter Fisher! I suppose it is stretching things a bit to suggest that you were having a slow week and decided to drum up some funeral business. What’s that you say? I’m the one guilty of stalling for time because I am not ready to face my chief suspect?

  Deep breath. Bring on Mr. Gladstone Spike. Yes, sir, I know it goes against everything most British to suspect a man who wears grey woolies and bakes the perfect madeira cake of being a cold-blooded killer. But I don’t see how I can let you off the hook. Not after the salmon. My contention, sir, is that you first attempted to murder your wife because you wanted to be free to take up where you left off years ago with Miss Thorn. Happily for everyone but Tobias, circumstances neutralized that endeavour, but tonight you succeeded in doing away with the femme fatale. Why the change of victim? Simple. You discovered that Miss Thorn was going to wed Lionel Wiseman. If you couldn’t have her, neither would he.

  Getting drowsy. A yawn split my face in two, and for a brief instant I thought Mr. Spike had reached out from behind the doorway of my mind to make sure I never opened my mouth again.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Mrs. Haskell.” Gladstone’s voice whispered its way down, down, into the very depths of sleep, where Miss Thorn sat on a clay pot by a waterfall, playing “Abide With Me” on the organ, while off to the side, robed in shadow, stood the Reverend Eudora Spike—reading from a black book that was either the Bible or the Fully Female manual. “The first shall be last, Ellie, and the last first!” How dear, how professional of her to point out that she should have topped my list of suspects. And how I wished for her—and all my Fellow Females—that love could be one long bubble bath.

  Morning turned up like a bad penny.

  “Ellie, tell me I am not abandoning you in your hour of need?” Ben bent over the bed, a quizzical smile on his lips and a glimmer in his eyes that made me think of sunlight taking a peek into a pirate’s treasure trove. “I would take the morning off but we are expecting a large luncheon crowd.”

  “Excuses!” I coiled my arms around his neck and held on to him for as long as I dared. “Off with you. The children and I have a full day planned.”

  At the doorway he looked back and I knew he wanted to pocket the moment and take it with him. But then he said, “I wonder how Flo Melrose is doing?”

  “She was at the party last night,” I replied, “and seemed fully back from the dead.”

  “Good.” Pensive look. “See you tonight, sweetheart.” The door closed on a final glimpse of his heart-stopping profile, and I climbed out of bed all fired up to catch Miss Thorn’s killer, before celibacy did me in.

  But half an hour into the routine of getting the twins up and fed, the flame petered out. Spread out in daylight, last night’s convictions seemed a sorry lot that didn’t amount to a handful of coffee beans. What horrible irony if Miss Thorn had legitimately died of a heart attack and Bunty and I had placed ourselves in the insidious position of hushing up a murder that wasn’t. As for that guff about Gladstone Spike, it was surely my imagination that was poisoned, not the fish.

  “What do you say?” I appealed to Abbey and Tam who sat in their feeder chairs looking like the offspring of Apollo with their sunbeam hair and sunshine smiles. “Tell me the honest truth, my darlings. Do you think Mummy should phone Bunty Wiseman and try and talk sense into her? We could then go to Dr. Melrose and ask him to tear up the death certificate. With luck no one need ever be the wiser.”

  Straining at their straps, the twins goo-gooed words of wisdom.

  “You think I’m copping out because I don’t have a clue how to trap the murderer?”

  No response to that one. And dogged by indecision, I plodded through the morning. By noon I was still as much at sixes and sevens as the kitchen, which was once more stacked to the ceiling with washing that wasn’t getting done because the washing machine had grown hardened to the thumps and kicks that were supposed to make it go.

  “Masochist!” I taunted to no avail, finally throwing up my soapy hands and heading into the hall to telephone Mr. Bludgett.

  “Good morning, this is Mrs. Haskell of—”

  “Ellie,” the voice shrilled in my ear. “What a thrill to hear from you on this glorious April day.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Squeals of laughter. “Now don’t go pulling my leg and pretending you don’t know who this is. We Fellow Females stick like glue, right?”

  “Moll?”

  “My Jock’s one-and-only.” Some of the fizz went out of her voice, but not all of it. “Have you spoken to Bunty?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “Then you don’t know it’s flags at half-mast?”

  “What?” Sometimes I think I have a natural aptitude for playing stupid.

  “Gladys Thorn is dead!”

  “That …”—I paused to take a deep breath—“I did know, but I’m afraid I can’t talk about it right now. My babies are alone in the playpen, so if you would ask your husband to come back and look at the washing machine …”

  “Will do!” Not a hint that she felt rebuffed. Could any woman be that unfailingly cheerful and never come apart at the seams or keep from driving other people bonkers? “Just one thing more, Ellie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be happy for Gladys. Think about it, what could be lovelier than to die when you’re bubbling over with happiness?”

  “Moll,” I said, struggling to keep all traces of acid out of my voice, “you do deserve a medal for looking on the bright side.”

  “Thanks!” Her merry laughter drilled a hole in my head. “It doesn’t hurt, does it, that the lady was a thorn in my flesh. And I don’t suppose Bunty will be putting on black.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “She said Lionel was devastated. Spent half the night crying in her arms, which isn’t all bad.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, one last thing, Ellie! There’s a little prayer service scheduled for six tonight at Fisher’s Funerals.”

  “Lovely,” I said before I could help myself. It was as though Gladstone Spike were hiding inside my head.

  Something was missing at Merlin’s Court and it took me until midafternoon to figure out what. Mrs. Malloy. The twins kept cocking their heads as if listening for her step in the hall. And even Tobias had a droop to his tail that suggested he missed the saucer of milk she would slip down for him when my back was turned. Last night, when I dropped her off at home, she hadn’t said anything about coming in today, so to worry about her absence was really quite presumptuous. I could almost hear her voice. “Is this the thanks I get, Mrs. H, for giving you extra of my valuable time? Can’t call me bloody soul me own!”

  “Quite right,
Mrs. Malloy,” I said, and kept saying, all the way down the hall to dial her number. But I needn’t have worried about getting one of her earfuls. Is there any lonelier sound on earth than the ringing of an unanswered telephone? And is there ever a less welcome sight than someone walking into your house unannounced and uninvited, when your mind is already a cellar peopled with all sorts of bludgeoners and riffraff? Pardon me while I say the F word.

  “Freddy!” The receiver leaped from my hand. “You really must pop in and scare the wits out of me more often.”

  “Save your raptures, cousin! And spare my blushes!” Before I could blanch twice, he dropped down on one knee like some Shakespearean trouper in doublet and hose and smote his breast once, twice, thrice, before tottering toward me at horrible speed, still on his knees, hands outstretched. “Ellie, lend me your ears!”

  Ridiculous, but it was the scruffy beard that got to me. “Freddy, what would I do without you? I’ll listen to your lines … and afterwards, even if it puts me in your debt forever, will you watch the twins for me for a little while?”

  Mrs. Malloy didn’t answer my knock. The house on Herring Street looked back at me as snooty as you please from its tight-lipped letter box to its wary lace curtain eyes. Who do you think you are, Mrs. High and Mighty Haskell, to come poking your nose round here?

  “I’m a friend, that’s who!” My whisper went spiralling up into the sky like smoke from some of the chimney pots round about. There was no smoke coming from Mrs. Malloy’s chimney and suddenly I got the absurd idea that this was because the house had stopped breathing. And what I had taken for awareness of my presence was in fact the fixed stare of rigor mortis. Returning to the car, I realized I had time to kill—lovely expression—before turning up at Fisher Funerals for Miss Thorn’s prayer service. And like pulling a rabbit from a hat, I came up with the bright idea of going to visit Flo Melrose. I’m not sure what I hoped to glean from her, but I felt there might possibly be something.