“I also was unable to sleep the night through,” Gladstone Spike confessed. “It’s a problem that’s been plaguing me for several weeks, and I often spend the small hours doing a bit of knitting or whipping up a sponge cake. But on this occasion I decided upon taking a walk around the grounds. I am, or, rather”—he cleared his throat—“Eudora and I are expecting a guest this weekend, someone of particular significance to our future, and it did occur to me, Ellie, as I passed the blackcurrant bushes, that Ben might be willing to share with me his recipe for summer pudding.”
“He’ll be delighted,” I said. “Seriously, Gladstone, it’s a pity Ben couldn’t have married you, considering the two of you share this grand passion for cooking.” My mind, in shying away from the suspicion that the Spikes’ weekend guest would be the doctor who had something to do with the surgery that would make most men wince, had blundered into making this grotesquely stupid statement.
“We would make quite a team.” Gladstone’s eyes twinkled, suggesting he took the joke at face value, unless … My heart missed a whole string of beats as I followed his gaze and saw my husband striding down the aisle towards us. Instead of wondering what brought Ben here, I reassessed that twinkle and thanked God that Eudora was not present to witness it and possibly misinterpret.
“Ellie!” My spouse had eyes only for me. Reaching me in full stride, Ben growled menacingly, “Do you deliberately set out to drive me to distraction? I woke in a cold sweat to find you weren’t in bed. After ransacking the house for any sign of you, I was forced to invade the privacy of Gerta’s bedroom and after quieting her hysteria, I asked her to take care of the twins for as long as it took me to return with or without you.”
“You shouldn’t have panicked …,” I faltered. Vanessa was watching us with great interest.
“The least you could have done was leave a note pinned to my pajamas. I was convinced you’d left me because you’ve been seeing another man. You haven’t been your usual affectionate self lately, Ellie, and there was that business of your being late for your birthday party. Something fishy there. Could it be you have a thing for Brigadier Lester-Smith—the urbane older man?” Ben drew a furious breath. “That’s what I was asking myself as I dashed over to the vicarage to have a word with Eudora in case you had confided in her as your spiritual advisor. And then I saw the lights in the church. What’s going on here?”
He now directed his fiery gaze upon Gladstone Spike as if suspecting the man of luring me to the church with the intent of using foul means to pry a recipe from me.
But before either the vicar’s husband or I could explain matters, Vanessa rose unsteadily from the pew on which she had been sitting, pressed a hand to her ivory brow, took a couple of faltering steps, whispered that she felt faint, and proceeded to pitch gracefully into my husband’s arms, which had opened to receive her.
Before I could blink, Ben lifted her up so that her face was cradled against his shoulder and the rippling river of her hair spilled in tawny torrents over his jacket sleeve. What a picture they made—he darkly handsome and appropriately impassive, she a wilted lily powerless for the moment to determine her own fate. A picture worthy of being reproduced on the cover of a romance novel. And I was not the only one to be both stunned and captivated by the image. Gladstone Spike was staring at my husband as if he had just seen the man of his dreams.
Chapter
10
The devil made me do something really wicked. When I got home I abandoned Abbey and Tam to Gerta’s care, went upstairs, and climbed into my bed that was neither too hard, nor too soft, but just right. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed out that it was six-thirty A.M., far too early in the day for a nap. And my conscience did its best to make me feel guilty by reminding me that Ben had left for work immediately after carrying Vanessa up to her room and gently depositing her on the bed. I could hardly expect him to toss her one-handed through the doorway, could I? Women don’t faint at the drop of a hat these days, so naturally he had been concerned about her, even though she insisted it was nothing and did not need to see a doctor.
Pulling the sheet over my head, I snuggled into the downy softness of the pillow, Forty winks would set me up for the day. I’d be a better mother to the twins if I made up for the night’s lack of sleep. And this evening I would cook a special dinner for Ben. It would be just the two of us … and Gerta, seeing it would be positively Gothic not to include her, I decided as the wallpaper blurred and the wardrobe drifted upon the horizon like a lighthouse swathed in fog. What horrible weather for May, I thought fuzzily as hailstones pelted the window.
I would have been able to ignore them if the telephone had not started ringing with inconsiderate persistence. Stuffing a pillow in each ear did not save me. By the time the great communicator had finally shut up, I had staggered to my feet and saw a shower of pebbles hit the window. The sun blazing through the window ridiculed the possibility that God had decided to enliven His day by intoning “Let there be hail!” No! Someone, some oafish person, was outside the house, scooping up gravel from the drive and tossing it heavenward by the fistful in hopes of rousing me from slumber. Gerta, I thought crossly, would prove to be the culprit. She undoubtedly had the twins outside and wanted to know if it was all right to let Abbey undress her doll and expose Sunshine’s plastic bottom to some passing sex offender.
Summoning up a smile liable to strike terror in my children’s hearts, I pulled back the curtains, opened the window, and shouted down, “Hold your fire! I’m unarmed and prepared to come quietly.”
How wrong can a woman be? The person staring up at me was a man I had never seen before in my life. A stocky, red-haired man who dropped his upraised hands and stood rubbing them together while giving an ear-splitting whistle that should have brought the local constabulary on the run.
“There’s my lass! A sight for sore eyes and”—I could see his Adam’s apple throb—“what a pair of knockers!”
“Get out of my garden, you pervert!” I almost suffocated in wrapping the heavy velvet curtain mummy-fashion around me so that only a wedge of my face was left to feed his bestial ardour. “If you’re not gone by the time I count to one, I’ll phone the police!”
“You’re something else, girl!” The red-headed fiend chuckled with evil relish and spread wide his arms. “Always one for a bit of a tease. Come on, Nessie, jump into me arms and tell me you missed your old Georgie Porgie!”
“Nessie?” I rolled the name around on my tongue, indifferent to the fact that I was showing more of my neck than was seemly. “Nessie—as in short for Vanessa?” This nasty encounter had turned out to be a classic case of mistaken identity. “I’m sorry, you’ve been knocking on the wrong window. I’m her cousin Ellie, but don’t be embarrassed: I’m flattered you saw a family resemblance. Probably just the sun in your eyes, but never mind, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Malloy.”
“I feel a right blithering idiot.” He gave a gulp that carried all the way up to my window. “I figured the room, yours, that is, had to be Nessie’s, seeing it was the only one with the curtains still drawn. She’s a great one for getting her beauty sleep, is my little lass.”
“Vanessa’s a prize in all respects.” The insincerity sat lightly upon my lips. “Her bedroom is on the other side of the house, but don’t give any of this another thought.” I avoided looking down at my … knockers. “Your attempt to surprise her was lovely and romantic and I’m only sorry she didn’t get to play Juliet to your Romeo.”
“You’re being a proper brick, Mrs. Haskell.” George Malloy wiped a hand over his sweaty face. “But there’s no two ways about it, I should have behaved meself and come knocking on the front door like a gent. Me mum will have my hide for this, let me tell you. She’s already given me an earful on how I’m mucking things up between you and her. And I can see it is a mite awkward, what with me marrying Nessie and Mum charring for her cousin.”
“Your mother rules the roost here at Merlin’s Court,” I informed hi
m, “but I do see she might decide it would be best to drop me from her list of clients. But that’s not your fault. So cheer up! I’ll nip downstairs and open the kitchen door for you.”
Flopping down on the bed in my skirt and blouse had made me into a reprehensibly rumpled hostess, but I doubted George Malloy would notice. And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. His Nessie would have explained that in addition to her own, she had been the beneficiary of my share of the family looks. Nessie! I couldn’t keep from laughing as I hurried down the stairs. How common! would have been Aunt Astrid’s verdict. The sort of name that belonged to a servant girl who had grown up skipping rope in the back streets of a Catherine Cookson novel. That Vanessa, her showcase daughter, should be brought so low must have been a pain in the royal rear. Nessie! And yet the way George Malloy had said the name sounded as tender as the morning light that poured in through the garden door as I opened up to let him inside.
“Hello,” I said. “Come in and make yourself at home.”
“I’ll take you up on that kind invite.” He removed his hands from his pockets and crossed the threshold to stand wiping his feet as if he were on a treadmill.
“Gerta, who takes care of our twins, must be giving them their baths, and Vanessa is still in bed.” Seen at close quarters, George Malloy’s looks did not improve to the point where I felt I need apologize for not being a raving beauty or wonder why Mrs. Malloy had not insisted on displaying her sonny boy’s photos in every house where she worked. George was short and verging on stout, and the owner of one of those mass-produced faces that you know did not cost his parents an arm and a leg. His red hair faded to the ginger of a nice but ordinary cat.
Speaking of cats, Tobias, who considers himself a prince among felines, wore a disparaging smirk as he surveyed our guest from the top of the Welsh dresser, but I had begun to warm to George.
“I’ll be blowed,” he said, “I’d know you was related to Nessie if I was to spot you in Charing Cross station.”
“You would?” I pulled a chair away from the table and watched him settle himself by crossing first one leg then the other before deciding upon putting both stubby feet on the floor.
“You’ve got that same sunny look, that same nice smile. If you’ll excuse me being so familiar, Mrs. Haskell.”
“Ellie,” I said warmly. “After all, we are going to be cousins.”
“Over my dead body!”
This less-than-familial statement was given an exclamation point by the slamming of the garden door. Mrs. Malloy, her black head resembling a thundercloud, clattered towards us on heels that were even higher than usual, indicating that this morning she intended to dust the high spots. Mrs. M. had made it clear from the get-go that she did not do ladders.
“I’ve nothing in particular against you, Mrs. H., other than you’ve shown rotten taste in picking your relations.” She dumped the supply bag down on the table, almost knocking her son down as he attempted to rise from his chair. “No use giving me them puppy-dog eyes, George! I’d as soon as dig me own grave as see you married to that toffee-nosed wench.” The aggrieved mother heaved a sigh that blew Tobias across the room. “Always treated me like the dirt in me dustpan, she has. If she had one shred of proper feeling, she’d have picked up the telephone and asked me how I felt about taking her on as a daughter-in-law.”
“Nessie’s shy.” George, perched an uncomfortable two inches above his chair, defended his betrothed.
“She’s been that way since she was a child,” I lied. “Vanessa always worried that her looks might create the mistaken impression that she bordered upon being shallow.”
“Are people talking about me as usual?”
My cousin could always pick the moment to make an entrance. Now she glided into the room, a vision of loveliness to behold in my former negligee. But Mrs. Malloy, unlike her son, whose eyes lit up with joy as he leapt to his feet, did not look noticeably smitten. Indeed, she appeared in need of a tumbler full of gin as Vanessa swept towards her with lace-edged arms outstretched.
“Mummy! May I call you that? I feel so incredibly close to you, the woman who gave my darling George life.”
“She’s a wonder, is my Nessie,” George murmured worshipfully.
Mrs. Malloy’s purple lips paled as Vanessa planted a kiss several inches to the right of the powdered cheek. “Don’t go getting ideas I suffered the tortures of the damned giving birth to me one and only. Fact is, he popped out like a champagne cork. You can call it luck if you like, though I’ve sometimes thought different, that the midwife was across the room at the time, having a smoke, and caught him before he landed in the saucepan of boiling water.”
“I’m glad you shared that story with us,” I said.
“Isn’t it sweet!” Vanessa rippled nails long enough to dissect frogs through her hair, so that it cascaded in a sun-burnished waterfall over her gleaming shoulders. “Oh, what bliss to belong to both of you, to be at the centre of my own little family.…” She extended one hand to George and the other to Mrs. Malloy, who immediately began fiddling in the supply bag.
“You’re bringing tears to me eyes, duck.” Out whipped the bottle of cleaning fluid that was mostly gin. “But we both know the only reason you’re marrying my George is because he’s made himself a pot of money. If it wasn’t for that …” Mrs. Malloy poured herself a capful of fortification and sipped it down with her little finger genteelly elevated. “If it wasn’t for the lolly, you wouldn’t have looked twice at George if you’d run him down in the street.”
“Now, Mum, I won’t have none of that.” The fruit of her loins intervened on behalf of his betrothed, who promptly wilted into his outstretched arms and would no doubt have rested her petal cheek upon his manly shoulder had he not been considerably the shorter of the two. “I don’t mean to start a rumpus, but I’ll not have anyone, including you, Mum, upsetting Nessie. She’s been through enough heartache what with her own mother turning her out on account of me.”
“Mummy refused to believe that I adore you, my darling.” Vanessa pressed impassioned lips to his; I hastily busied myself filling the kettle rather than witness this nice man being played like a harmonica. “And it does hurt, because Mummy and I were always such chums, borrowing each other’s fur coats and jewelry like a couple of giddy schoolgirls. And now with this rift with Mummy I feel like an orphan.” A wisp of a sigh that I found hard to equate with Aunt Astrid—who always looked to me as though she had douched with vinegar and water once too often.
The moan that pulsed through the room came not from Vanessa but the kettle, which had a clogged whistle and was given to such outbursts. While I set out cups and saucers, George Malloy cradled his beloved against his stalwart chest.
“There, there, lass, you’ve got me for good and all, and if Mum doesn’t come round to accepting you as me chosen wife, she’ll be the loser.”
“Meaning you’ll stop sending me a few quid for me birthday so I’m reduced to going out charring for a living,” said Mrs. Malloy as if she were currently employed in another line of work. “Very well.” And with that, she screwed the cap back on the bottle of gin with an air of finality which had me convinced she was going to pick up her supply bag and march out of the house, never to return.
“Very well, what?” George eyed her grimly.
Mrs. M. drew back her black taffeta shoulders and stood as if facing the firing squad. “I’m not saying things will work out, mind you, between me and Orphan Annie, but if you’re set on marrying her, I’m prepared to take her on as a daughter-in-law. Strictly on approval, you understand. A six-month trial basis is what I have in mind.”
“Whatever you say, Mummy Malloy!” Unlocking her arms from her betrothed’s neck, Vanessa spun around in gauzy swirls of silk and sea-foam lace to express her gratitude to her future mum-in-law with a fluttering of the eyelashes and a demure smile. She lifted her teacup with a flourish. “How about a toast, to love in all its many guises?”
Personally I would ha
ve preferred my favourite toast with lots of butter and lashings of marmalade. Never mind. I joined in the clinking of cups with good grace and even managed a protest when Mrs. Malloy said she had better get down to work, seeing she was going to have to fork out some of her hard-earned cash for a new frock for the nuptials.
“Take the day off,” I urged her. “Why don’t the three of you go out to lunch, at Abigail’s if you like, compliments of the house?”
“Thank you, Mrs. H.”—she gave me a telling glance from under her neon lids—“but I’d just as soon the young couple went off for a bit on their own. I’m sure they’ve got plenty to talk about that’s not for my ears.”
George beamed his appreciation of his parent’s newfound sensitivity. “Come to think of it, Mum, I do want a word or two in Nessie’s ear hole about the Airobyc. The new suspension exercise bicycle that’ll be going into production next month at the factory,” he explained. “If I do say so myself, it’s a right nifty concept, the bike being supported four feet off the ground on a steel frame to provide a feeling of weightlessness and free-floating. And I need to ask me favourite model here if she’s ready to get back in the saddle for our advertising campaign.”
The smile Vanessa gave him was somewhat lackluster. And I could see her point, presuming she would be doing what she’d let slip George had hired her for at the beginning of their working relationship. Those famed “before” and “after” shots, which by means of some havey-cavey camerawork would bloat her up and slim her back down in ten seconds flat, in hopes of luring thousands of the desperately overweight into purchasing the Airobyc with its no-money-back guarantee in order to achieve the same miraculous results.
I expected my cousin to swan upstairs and spend the better part of the day getting dressed for her tête-à-tête with George. Instead, she went out with him into the garden, a diaphanous daphne who I had no doubt would get George to shift gears from bicycle to wedding bells before they had crossed the moat bridge.
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams Page 15
