How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams

by Dorothy Cannell

  Remembering a novel I had read recently titled Love Springs Eternal, the walk home passed quickly. With a smile tacked on my face I crossed the moat bridge and went up the steps to the garden door.

  Gerta was in the kitchen, which smelled comfortingly of ginger and cloves; and if that wasn’t enough to lift my spirits, the twins were happily engaged in building a tower of marvelously abstract design on the rug in front of the Aga.

  “Hello,” I said brightly, and received a shock. The face Gerta turned to me was exceedingly bleak. Her cheeks had gone from plump to hollow, and her plaits swished ominously as she came towards me.

  “Oh, dear!” I exclaimed, closing the door behind me before I could take the coward’s way out and bolt back outside. “You’re upset because I left the house without leaving you any instructions. It was thoughtless, I know, but Mrs. Malloy promised to explain that my husband and I were taking advantage of the wonderful luxury of having you here by going on a picnic.…” I faltered guiltily.

  “Mrs. Mop went home two long hours ago.” Gerta pointed at the clock as if expecting it to corroborate her words. “And I and the munchkins am all alone.” She was now trembling so violently, she had to sit down in the rocking chair with a thump that almost sent her over backwards. “We are all alone in the study room where is the television, when we hear someone come in that way.” She directed a finger in the general vicinity of the garden door. “I think it is you, Frau Haskell. And I say to the children—‘Oopsy daisy! We go and tell Mumma what a happy time we have all together.’ ”

  “Then what happened?” I stared in bafflement at the twins, and Abbey lifted her head of barley-sugar curls to say with suitable pathos, “Tam hitted me.”

  “Me didn’t!” Her brother knocked over the wooden tower to emphasize his denial, and I had to scoop up my little girl before she ruined her organdy and pink ribbon image by bopping him over the head with a red block.

  “I think Abbey is telling the fairy tale.” Gerta was twisting her plaits into a rope under her chin, thus running great risk of choking herself.

  “Who was it you heard coming into the house?” I demanded desperately. “Was it Mrs. Mop—I mean Mrs. Malloy—returning because she had forgotten her handbag?”

  “No! When I go out into the hall I see this intruder in black trousers and the raincoat with the collar turned up to the chin and the hat with the lid pulled down over the eyes walking bold as brass lamps into the big sitting room. It is not your husband. I know Herr Haskell from his walk. This is a burglar, I understand that because my mind always works like snap!” Gerta demonstrated the quickness of her thinking with her finger and thumb. “I know even before I see him pick up the candlesticks on the mantel shelf and check for to see if they are silver.”

  “Good heavens!” I caught Abbey as she slid through my arms. “Whatever did you do?”

  “I push the munchkins back in the study room and shut the door.” Gerta had a little more colour in her cheeks as she warmed to her tale. “Then I tipsy-toe over to where the statue of St. Francis is on the shelf in the hall.” Here she paused to cross herself. “Such a good saint he is; I know he will help save me from the wicked one, who still has the back to me.”

  “Go on!” I was beginning to feel numb, partly because Abbey was pinching my cheeks, and with my eyes watering it was difficult to keep Gerta’s face in focus.

  “I creep up behind the wicked one who would steal from my so-good employees. And I hit him bang on the head with St. Francis. To give myself strength I think about my husband and how I would like to kill him dead, with lots of blood and a smashed-up skull. And the burglar he fell without making a beep. With the face down on the floor.”

  “Tam hitted me.” Abbey spoke with her rosebud lips pressed up against my nose, and I realized that she had heard Gerta’s account before and had made up her own variation. With herself as the damsel in distress.

  “You were incredibly brave, Gerta,” I said. “What did the police say when they arrived?”

  “What?” Our au pair looked at me blankly. “I did not telephone them! To do so would, I think, be making myself too much in charge, I close the door and push the big table from the hall in front of it. And since all this time I have not heard any sound from that room.”

  No, I thought, because in all probability the burglar had long since come round from that tap on the head with a plaster of Paris statue and had legged it out the window. Putting Abbey down on the floor, I determined that I would go outside and take a peek through the latticed panes so as to relieve Gerta’s mind before I rang the constable. At that moment, however, the pounding started, setting the copper bowls clanging into each other on the iron rack suspended from the ceiling over the cooker. Abbey and Tam paid no attention, but Tobias Cat promptly shinned up the Welsh dresser, and Gerta cannoned into my arms. An outraged voice yelled with unladylike menace, “Ellie, I always suspected you hated me, but I never thought you would go to such lengths to make me feel unwelcome when I decided to honour you with a visit.”

  “The burglar?” Gerta staggered backwards.

  “That’s one name for her,” I replied in hollow accents as I went out into the hall to open the lion’s den. “There is only one woman in the world who would find it fashionably amusing to dress like a mobster, and who wouldn’t hesitate to breeze into my house without so much as knocking and immediately check out the hallmark on my silver candlesticks. That woman is my cousin Vanessa.”

  Chapter

  7

  It is not a crime to forget someone’s birthday, especially when the someone is yourself. When Ben walked into the kitchen the following morning, looking quite fetching in his charcoal grey suit, and said “Many happy returns, sweetheart,” I thought for one harrowing moment that he was wishing upon me a series of repeat performances of Vanessa’s arrival in our midst. It is hardly surprising that I was not thinking clearly.

  On being freed from her imprisonment in our drawing room, my cousin had staged a dramatic and, admittedly, graceful swoon on the flagstones in the hall. Presumably fashion models, considering all the perils of tripping as they swan down the runway, are taught how to fall without injury. And I don’t believe for an instant she added another bump to the one she already had on her head. Upon coming to, Vanessa demanded that Gerta be handed over to the authorities on a charge of assault and battery. She also suggested that I place the children in the nearest orphanage because their squealing was driving her right up the wall. Unfortunately it did not drive her out of the house.

  It finally dawned on me that Ben was wishing me many happy returns of the anniversary of my birth, but it was difficult to bubble over with elation at being another year older when I thought of Vanessa snuggled up in the tower bedroom. My cousin was wearing my best green nightie with the sea-foam lace because, as she explained, she had left the London flat she shared with her mother in such haste that she had failed to bring so much as a toothbrush. Naturally, I had been loath to invite her ridicule by offering her one of my cotton nighties. Too domesticated for words, would have been her verdict. Vanessa had further managed to rattle my rib cage, before she finished the glass of brandy she had demanded to settle her nerves, by asking me if I had misplaced my eyelashes.

  “God’s in His heaven,” Ben said after bestowing a birthday kiss on my lips, “and I suppose Vanessa is still in her bed.”

  “For the moment all is right with the world.” I picked up the coffeepot and poured us each a cup. “One of my cousin’s better points is that she and mornings have never hit it off. I expect that George Malloy will wake up one day and realize he hasn’t seen his wife in daylight in thirty years. But I imagine that will be the least of his complaints.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?” Ben raised an interrogative eyebrow as he took the cup and saucer I handed him. “I know Vanessa can be a witch, but maybe you should go easy on her, considering her mother threw a fit over the engagement and ordered her out of the flat.�
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  I stirred my coffee vigorously enough to remove the pattern from the inside of the cup. “Next you’ll be telling me that Vanessa came down to Merlin’s Court because she has a burning desire to become pals with her future mother-in-law! Let me remind you”—I wagged my spoon at him—“that on Vanessa’s last visit here she described Mrs. Malloy as having less breeding than a cart horse.”

  “Your cousin is a snob.” Ben poured himself a refill. “But you have to admit she hasn’t let her fiancé’s lack of blue blood stop her from marrying him, despite her mother’s objections. Sounds to me as if she may love the bloke. And she’ll want to please him by making friends with Mrs. Malloy.”

  “I’ll believe that,” I said nastily, “when I wear a smaller size frock than Vanessa.”

  “Let’s forget about her for now.” Ben glanced at the wall clock whose hands were moving relentlessly towards seven-thirty, the time he usually left for the restaurant. “Gerta will be bringing the twins downstairs soon, so why don’t we treasure these few moments alone?” He set his cup in the sink before crossing to the alcove by the garden door and coming back to me with a festively wrapped box that was too big to contain a piece of jewelry other than a crown. “I’ll put this on the table and when I say ready, steady, go, you can start tearing off the paper.”

  “Why, thank you, darling.” I gave him a kiss before setting to work with my bare hands. Scissors never stepped forward to offer their services in our house. “This is wonderful. Exactly what I wanted!”

  “I thought you’d be pleased.” Ben turned my present at a better angle so that the sunlight could highlight its mechanical perfections. I was now the proud owner of a cappuccino machine. “You’ll see that it comes not only with a booklet of instructions but a videotape titled Introduction to Cappuccino Making.”

  “Do I also have to take evening classes?” I asked in an attempt to make light of the mounting intimidation I experienced when confronted by the battery of buttons and the handle which, in all likelihood, would send the machine into orbit if turned the wrong way.

  “It really is child’s play to operate.” Ben stroked my hair fondly but fortunately did not kiss me, or he might have realized my lips were trembling. For me, plugging in the Hoover has always been a life-threatening procedure. And I never touch a lightbulb with the naked hand even when it is still in its box.

  “This part looks easy.” I studied the two cappuccino cups and saucers that came as part of the package.

  “Think of our future evenings together.” Fortunately Ben noticed only that the clock said seven-thirty and lifted his jacket from the back of a chair. “First the delicious foreplay of grinding the beans and savouring the intoxicating aroma. Then the two of us sitting together after dinner, sipping our cappuccino and foaming at the lips if the telephone should ring and destroy the magic moment.”

  “I can’t wait.” I followed him to the door. “Thank you, darling, for a wonderful present.”

  “Oh, one more thing, Ellie—” He turned to me, apparently struck by a brilliant idea. “Why don’t you come down to Abigail’s at six this evening and we’ll have dinner? I’d take you somewhere else, but I can’t think of a place”—he quirked a mocking eyebrow—“where the food is half as good as mine.”

  “That sounds nice.” I picked a piece of thread off the shoulder of his jacket. “But wouldn’t it be better to eat at home with the twins? You could bring something from the restaurant to make it a special treat.”

  “We’ll get home early and have cake with Abbey and Tam.” Ben was heading down the steps as he spoke. “You have to go down to Chitterton Fells to the library meeting, so why not make an afternoon of it—go shopping and then meet me at Abigail’s? The reason we have Gerta is to make it easier for you to get out of the house.”

  “I’ll be there, darling!” I said, and, after closing the door on his retreating back, gathered up the cappuccino box and the wrapping paper and put them in the tidy bin. A fancy lace-trimmed nightie and matching peignoir, to replace the ones I would be lucky to get back from Vanessa, would have been easy to operate. But all gifts can’t be romantic, I reminded myself as I began getting the twins’ breakfast ready.

  The reason I hadn’t wanted to leave Abbey and Tam for the evening was that with Gerta assuming the responsibility of getting them up and dressed in the mornings, I was beginning to feel I was missing out on huge chunks of their day, including my role as keeper of the twins’ bath. Would Gerta understand the importance to Tam of sitting at the tap end? And would Abbey hesitate to explain that the rubber duck got a dusting with baby powder after being dried with the towel?

  Part of my problem, I reflected as I stirred the orange juice I had taken from the fridge, was that as of yet I had only two clients interested in my services as an interior decorator. Or could it be that I liked being a full-time, hands-on mum, one who really didn’t relish someone else taking a prominent role in raising my children? I certainly wasn’t worried about Gerta’s competence because she had mistaken Vanessa for a burglar and in the upset of that moment pictured herself caving in her husband’s head with the statue of St. Francis.

  Lots of perfectly nice women fantasize about murdering their errant spouses, and no one could have looked less homicidal than Gerta when she now appeared in the kitchen, still wearing her alpine outfit, with Abbey and Tam toddling in her wake. I had offered to lend her some clothes, but she’d told me there was no need. She had washed her undies in the bathroom basin and dried them with the hair dryer.

  “Please, Gerta,” I told her now, “make as much use as you wish of the washing machine and tumble dryer. Ben and I want you to treat this as your home.”

  “You are good, Frau Haskell. It is the wonder you don’t throw me out the house on both ears because of the mistake I make with your beautiful cousin.”

  “She should have knocked instead of walking into the house and scaring you out of your wits.” I did not add that I myself had often wished to give Vanessa a conk on the head. My heart was full, along with my arms, when Abbey and Tam rushed up to me as if I were their long-lost mother. “You deserve a bonus, Gerta, for risking your life to protect the children. And I’m going to write you a cheque so that you can go shopping for a change of clothes.”

  “No, Frau Haskell!” A tear slid down her plump cheek and she dabbed it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t deserve for you to be so good to me.”

  “Now, don’t argue.” I sat and lifted first Tam, then Abbey onto my lap. “Why not go into Chitterton Fells this morning and rig yourself up? I won’t have to leave for my meeting at the library until around twelve-thirty.”

  “My husband can send my clothes,” she sniffed, “if he is not too busy making the kissy-face with the new love of his life, Mr. Meyers.”

  “In the meantime”—I smiled at her—“you are to go shopping. There is a bus stop a few yards from St. Anselm’s Church.” For a moment I thought I had put her off by bringing back memories of her first night here, when she had seen the spectral figure of the Virgin Bride in the churchyard and had been chased by the black dog to the front door of Merlin’s Court. But it appeared that Gerta had either blocked out the memory or that a bright blue sky made for a daylight world in which further meetings with evil incarnate seemed unlikely.

  Mr. Babcock had deposited the usual six pints of milk before I came downstairs, so I was still left guessing as to how his new bride had reacted to the arrival of Heathcliff. While Gerta and I were getting the twins into their booster seats at the table, I wondered whether I should take the Babcocks’ wedding present with me this afternoon and give it to Sylvia at the meeting, but decided it would be more appropriate to take it to their house tomorrow. She had been pressing me to stop by for a cup of tea, but until now it had been difficult on account of the twins. Sylvia, who was afraid of the air she breathed, might have leapt onto a chair and screamed bloody murder if she saw a child in her front room.

  The morning passed at a happi
ly plodding pace, with Abbey and Tam playing peaceably with their toys and Gerta insisting she would not leave until she had helped me tidy up, this not being one of the days when Mrs. Malloy came to rule the roost with her iron mop. But when ten-thirty rolled around, Gerta admitted she would need to catch the next bus into the village if she were to have enough time to buy a deodorant at Boots, let alone anything else, and be back in time for me to keep my appointment at the library.

  Just as the hall clock began to strike eleven, in came Vanessa looking like the goddess of spring in my sea-green peignoir set. My cousin has always been one of those horrid females who, although half-dead from getting only ten or eleven hours’ sleep, manages to look utterly ravishing. It’s the fault of all that titian hair, the creamy skin—with the blush of rose on the perfect cheekbones—and those marvelous sherry-coloured eyes that look all the more sultry when smudged with sleep.

  “For pity’s sake, Ellie.” She pressed her pearl-pink fingertips to her forehead. “Can’t you shut up that blasted clock? I’m too exhausted to have a headache this early in the morning.”

  “Here, have a cup of tea.” I stepped around Abbey and Tam to hand her the one I had been about to drink. “It’s not quite time for anything stronger.”

  “Such as poison?” My cousin smiled sweetly at me as she trailed, in drifts of green gauze and lace, to sink gracefully onto a chair. “Yes, darling, I can read you like a book. The sort with the foot-high letters that little what’s-his-name is looking at.” She pointed gingerly at Tam, as if afraid he would leap up from the floor and bite off her finger. “I know you positively loathe having me here, disrupting all this charming domesticity. My God! What is that nasty-looking contraption? Some new gadget to let you take your own blood pressure if you get a bit worked up when you’re making jam and it won’t jell?”