Femmes Fatal

by Dorothy Cannell

  I had been to her house once a couple of years before, for a workshop connected with the St. Anselm’s bazaar, and I found my way back to it now with the almost spooky ease I had encountered when driving to Jacqueline Diamond’s home on the night of Norman’s death. Goodness, was that only a couple of days ago? Traumatic events certainly stretch time out of all proportion. Ah, here was the familiar drive leading to the building that looked more like a school or a fire station than a house. No lace curtains here. No curtains at all from what I could see.

  The front garden was a concrete parking lot dotted with fir trees like cones to be maneuvered in a driving test, and I crossed this expanse with quaking footsteps, convinced I would somehow fail to pass muster before reaching the front door. Guilty conscience, Ellie! If Dr. Melrose is struck off for falsification of medical documents you will never forgive yourself. And that’s so silly. You’re a victim of circumstance. An innocent bystander caught up in events bigger than yourself. A pawn in the cosmic scheme of things.

  What a picture! There I stood on the Melroses’ doorstep, flushed with an overwhelming sense of unimportance. I didn’t so much as lift a finger to ping the doorbell before it was opened by Flo, looking like Friar Tuck in a brown robe, which, from the way it moulded her free-flow form, hid not so much as a hair shirt.

  “Ellie Haskell!” Her stare was as blank as the unadorned walls of the hall, even as her outstretched hands, made monstrous by reddish-brown stains, beckoned me over the threshold. “What brings you here?”

  “I …” I dug my hands in the pocket of my beige linen coat and took them out again. “I … was in the neighbourhood and wondered if you might need a ride to Miss Thorn’s prayer service.”

  “That was dear of you.” Flo’s smile seemed to slide over her shoulder. I realized that even though she was looking directly at me, her attention was fixed somewhere behind her. Fair enough! I had trouble dragging my eyes away from those hands and focusing them on … the trail of spatter spots … of that same grizzly brown … leading from where Flo stood, across the pale green linoleum to one of the rooms off the hall. “Yes, very kind indeed, Ellie, but I am not going to the prayer service.”

  “Oh!”

  “But one of these days”—the Friar Tuck hair bobbed against her cheeks—“you and I must meet for coffee or lunch.” No doubt about it, her voice was shooing me out the door, which she had left strategically open. The woman couldn’t get rid of me fast enough, which meant she was hiding something. Which meant I had to play dense—a role, Freddy would say, which I perform to perfection.

  “What fun!” As punishment, this smile would be stuck on my face for good. “Why don’t we strike while the iron is hot? And—” I closed the door with my elbow—“go and take a peek at your calendar.”

  “This really isn’t the best time—”

  “No time ever is! That’s why it always gets away from us.”

  “You may be right.” With a hunch to her shoulder, which could have been a shrug, Flo glanced toward the stairs, then turned about and glided with a surprising fawnlike grace toward a door on the far left-hand side of the hall. “Time certainly got away from Gladys Thorn. I wonder if she had a premonition that sent her to the church that night?”

  “What night?”

  “The night before last—when I was in the car accident involving your poor cat. When we were driving back home very slowly down Cliff Road, I saw her standing just inside the churchyard gates with her bicycle propped up against the yews and the moon behind her … like a halo. After what I had just been through, it gave me quite a creepy feeling.”

  “I’m sure.” So it hadn’t been Gladstone Spike that I had spotted while waiting with Tobias in my arms for Ben to return with the picnic basket! Which meant—I stared uncomfortably at Flo’s rear—that Dr. Melrose must be added to my suspect list. Miss Thorn’s presence on the scene—her old organ stomping ground—that night meant she might have seen him poised on the cliff edge with his wife’s “corpse” slung over his shoulder. And knowing how our Gladys tended to twitter, she might well have gabbed to him about his midnight marauding, perhaps during her engagement party, and thus sealed her fate. Assuming I was correct in my evil suspicions, then what a chuckle for the doctor—listening to Bunty’s pleadings that he cite natural causes on the death certificate!

  “My calendar should be in here.” Flo pushed open a door into a room that reeked of turpentine and oil paints. Unlike the hall walls, these were virtually papered with portraits … of nude men.

  “Be honest.” Flo sidestepped her way between two tables made out of sawhorses and sheets of plywood. “Be brutal if you like. Won’t bother me. I thrive on criticism.”

  “They’re wonderful,” I gushed. “Such form and definition!” My eyes were riveted to a blond chap who had obviously been a good boy about eating his corn flakes. “Are they … anatomically correct? Or, are some … drawn larger than life?”

  “No. All done to scale.”

  “My goodness!” Skirting a carousel stacked with paint tins, my foot skidded on a patch of wet floor, and I would have gone crashing down if Flo hadn’t grabbed me by the upper arm.

  “Sorry.” She held up her stained hands. “Had a bit of a spill moments before you came.”

  “Ah!” Another of life’s little mysteries cleared up. The ghastly spatters were paint stains.

  “And here’s the calendar.” It was produced with a flourish that said more clearly than words: A couple more minutes and I can bustle you out the door, Mrs. Haskell. Then a look came into her eyes that cried out, Too late. Turning to see the door being pushed open from the hall, I braced myself for the entrance of Dr. Melrose … and saw instead a far handsomer gentleman, one sporting a maroon dressing gown.

  I didn’t faint. Fainting is an art which I never mastered, but I prayed for oblivion, as I backed perilously close to the paint pots.

  “Hello, Ellie!” Ben said with a smile as crisp as his towel-dried hair. “What brings you here?”

  “I …” Croaking voice. “I get to ask the questions.”

  “You know what,” Flo said as she glided around us, “I think it might be best if I left the two of you together.” The door clicked shut behind her.

  “Well, isn’t this nice.” Arms folded, my errant spouse stood tapping a bare foot on the bare floor.

  “How can you stand there …?”

  “My dear, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Have you no shame?” I was practically jumping up and down with rage.

  “Why, sweetheart”—his eyes had a glitter that riveted me in place—“are you in any position to impugn my honour when you have been living a lie for days, if not weeks?”

  “What?”

  “Flo shocked the socks off me”—he looked down at his bare feet—“by mentioning what you have signally failed to mention, Ellie: your membership in Fully Female.”

  “Why …” Guilt fired up my voice. “Why shouldn’t I join if I wish.”

  “Ellie, you didn’t exactly take up tennis. This was something that involved the two of us.” He cinched the maroon dressing gown more firmly around his Apollo-like waist. “And it so happens that I object to being treated like a trained seal.”

  “That was never the idea.”

  “Really? Think back to the night when you wore those damned silly horns. I’d call that a circus act all right.”

  “You didn’t say so at the time!”

  “Because I’ve grown used to craziness from you.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Ben was now looking at me more in sorrow than in anger. “I like expecting the unexpected when it comes to our relationship. What I don’t want is to be paragraph one, page ten in a How To sex manual. How would you like it if I came to you complete with instruction booklet: ‘Hold right breast firmly …’ ”

  “You know what I think?” Sounding like a shrewish fishwife, I flung out an arm to include the portrai
ts on the wall. “I think you are trying to turn the tables, Bentley T. Haskell, so I can’t say a word about your state of semiundress, the reason for which is appallingly obvious. But if you think I will permit you to flaunt your maleness on these walls, let alone those of Merlin’s Court, you have another think coming!”

  “Ellie—”

  “I refuse to take Abigail’s portrait down from above the mantelpiece!”

  “Would you stop talking rubbish!” Two strides and he was nose to nose with me. The blaze of his eyes scorched my skin. “I didn’t come here today to have my portrait painted. I came to ask Flo to paint one of you with the twins from a snapshot I brought along. We were discussing the project when I clumsily knocked over a tin of paint and got the stuff all over me and the floor. Whereupon I accepted her gracious offer of a shower and … here we are.”

  “Oh!”

  “I came down to request some cleaning fluid for my clothes.”

  “Say no more!” I cried. “You’re a saint and I am a total idiot!” Wracked with remorse, I fled the room and made my escape down the hall and through the front door, not really flattering myself that Ben would pursue me outdoors in Dr. Melrose’s dressing gown. But he did, whereupon I took off in the getaway car, with the sound of his voice almost drowning out the roar of the engine.

  “Ellie!”

  So many nuances in a name. Was he calling me back or saying good-bye?

  The Fisher Funeral Chapel was sufficiently well lit that I didn’t have to grope my way down the aisle to join the group assembled in the front pews, but no one could have accused the place of any lack of sobriety. The windows were draped with the most mournful of purples and the air was heavy with the scent of gardenias, possibly from a spray can, but let’s not be snippy. Focus on the accoutrements, Ellie! Feast your eyes on the neat little pews and the ceiling painted with the pearly gates. Don’t look at the coffin. But even with my eyes lowered to the mosaic floor I saw it, taking pride of place before the dollhouse altar. The face propped up on the satin pillow could belong to anyone dead or alive. Was she wearing her spectacles? One step in front of the other. And sooner than I would have liked, I was sidling into the pew alongside people I didn’t know from Adam, which was better I suppose than being next to Moll Bludgett, who was two rows in front of me with her husband. Who knew, the ever-jolly Moll might send me into nervous peals of laughter, which would never do. I took a brave peek between the heads in front. Yes, Miss Thorn was wearing her specs, which looked a little silly with her eyes closed, but I had to admit, given what Walter Fisher had to work with, she did look positively radiant in her bridal white. She was holding a bunch of white violets, and as someone moved, causing a shift in the way the light hit the coffin, I caught a flash from those clasped hands and saw, straining forward, that she was wearing her diamond engagement ring. How romantic of Lionel Wiseman to wish it buried with her. Out the corner of my eye I saw the fiancé in question, standing in the front pew next to his wife. I hoped that Bunty would look my way so I could get an idea of how she was holding up. But she didn’t. My roving eye picked out Gladstone Spike and Dr. Melrose, but no sign of Mrs. Malloy. Silly of me to have counted on her being here …

  The scent of gardenias was overpowering. Gripping the rail of the pew, I lowered my head for a moment and when I looked up, Walter Fisher had made his appearance along with the Reverend Eudora Spike. Was it the lighting that turned her face to wax? Or was her dark robe responsible by way of contrast? This wasn’t the well-corseted woman with the finger-waved hair who had sat in my kitchen drinking tea. She was a being set apart from the laypeople. Stepping down onto the first altar step, she bowed her head and let out a breath that seemed to fill the chapel like the beat of angel wings. Getting herself spiritually primed, I supposed, to address the bereaved. But before she could speak one word of balm, Mr. Fisher stopped fidgeting around the coffin, fluffing up the pillow, prinking at the violets, and came padding down the altar steps to get his spiel in first.

  “Mr. Wiseman.” Deep bow to the chief mourner. “Ladies and gentlemen, I trust each of you will savour these last moments in the presence of a truly lovely lady. If I say so myself, I think I’ve done Gladys Thorn proud. Everyone by all means come up after the prayers and bid her a personal farewell. But let’s have no kisses on the forehead, we don’t want to mess up her hair, do we? And, one final admonition. If you must smoke to steady your nerves, I ask you not to drop ash in the coffin; we wouldn’t want to cremate the dear lady here and now.”

  Was the man trying to be funny? The moment he had bowed himself off-stage—I mean, off the altar—the Reverend Spike called us all to prayer.

  “Heavenly Father, we ask your blessing on our departed sister, Gladys Thorn. Grant her your heavenly redemption and look also in mercy on those who mourn her passing. Free those of us who continue on this our earthly journey from the burden of sin, and let us confess our faults one to the other in the certain hope of your bountiful redemption.”

  She raised her head and looked into the faces of those assembled. Her eyes roved the pews and met mine. They would have passed on, but in that split second I was struck by … call it a bolt of heavenly lightning, call it what you will. Without meaning to, without wanting to, I stuck up my hand and cried out in a ringing voice: “Please, Vicar, I have a sin to confess.”

  All heads turned. All eyes flashed toward me.

  “Ellie, dear,” Eudora Spike said gently, “I didn’t mean now. If you would like to come to me after the service …”

  “No, I can’t hold it in a moment longer. I can no longer keep silent. I haven’t felt myself since I realized that a foul murder had been committed.”

  “She should be committed.” The words came from somewhere in the crowd, but I didn’t search out the speaker; I didn’t wait to hear more. Gathering up my handbag, I raced out of that chapel. My goodness, I did seem to be making a habit of this sort of exit. But even when I was in my car and driving up Cliff Road at an unusually reckless speed, I didn’t feel I had made good my escape. The scent of gardenias was on my hands as they turned the steering wheel. The sound of that word—murder—still drummed in my ears. But for all the names I called myself, I didn’t really regret my mad outburst. By supporting Bunty I had left a killer at large, so whose place was it but mine to reel him … or her … in. And all this did help take my mind off my problems with my darling husband.

  I had every intention of going straight home. But seemingly of its own volition, the car turned in at the gates of St. Anselm’s. I knew I had to put my thoughts in order—subconsciously, I suppose—the way a dying person puts his affairs in order. Before I knew it, I was wending my way between the moon-washed tombstones and up the steps to the heavy oak door. I was sure it would be locked—but wrong again, and there went my feet, walking me into the dusky nave. I didn’t question that there were lights on. I only wished that there were more of them. There was a ghostliness to the pews and fluted columns as if they were no more of this day and age than those people who had worshipped here hundreds of years ago.

  Did I hear footsteps behind me? I told myself not to be silly, but hark—the sound came again and this time I could not convince myself it was only the echo of my own tread. The shadowy distance from where I now stood, with my back to the door, seemed to stretch from yards into miles. No good thinking that I had set myself up for this terror. My eyes dodged this way and that looking for an escape while the footsteps got louder and closer—possibly because I was confusing them with the pounding of my heart. But perhaps I was in luck; to my left I spied the confessional that Reverend Spike had mentioned having installed. Quick as a flash, silent as a shadow, I opened one of the two doors—I had no idea whether it was the priestly or penitential one—and slipped inside, leaving the door ajar so as not to be trapped in the pitch dark. A feathery touch brushed my neck and I almost screamed. Stupid me. It was only my hair. Slowly my breathing steadied and I had just told myself that I had imagined those footsteps �
� when I heard the door on the other side of the confessional creak open and shut.

  A muffled voice filled my darkness, and before I could help myself, I had reached out a trembling hand to draw back the wooden slot, exposing a small grille … and the face of Gladys Thorn.

  “Please don’t cry,” I begged. Absolutely useless. I might as well have pleaded with a bat to stop batting its wings. We sat in the pew immediately outside the confessional, taking great gulps of stale air that tasted as if it had been there since the eleventh century. High on their pedestals, cloaked in shadow, the stone saints waited breathlessly for something new in revelations.

  “Miss Thorn?”

  “Yes?” The soggy handkerchief was lowered an inch and the mushroom eyes met mine. Flinchingly.

  “You’re really you?” I couldn’t go on. My tongue had turned to dust and ashes.

  “Who else?”

  “But you’re dead!”

  “Oh, dearie me, no!” The tittering laugh almost sent me over the edge of the pew. “You must be confusing me with my sister Gladys.”

  “You mean …?” I had to hold on to my head to keep it from flying off.

  “I am Gladiola Thorn.”

  “Her twin?”

  “Actually”—the tip of her red nose twitched with pride—“we are … were … triplets.”

  “Three of you! All identical?”

  “Not exactly. There was Gladys, myself, and our brother Gladstone, with whom I believe you are currently acquainted.”

  “I—”

  She didn’t give me room to finish. “Gladys and I … if you will pardon my mentioning so delicate a subject … we were hatched, so to speak, from the same egg—making us identical twins. But all similarity ended with our looks. In the days of our girlhood I was the wild one, breaking with the C. of E. to join the Methodists.”

  “I remember Gladys mentioning … So it was you Mrs. Melrose saw entering Unity Methodist—providing the vicar with an excuse to give your sister the push.”