“I’m sure you had your reasons” was all I could say.
“And I’d like to tell you about them, Ellie, but not over the phone. Could you come here, just for half an hour?”
“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” I promised, and replaced the receiver in time to see Ben coming down the stairs with the twins at his heels.
“Sorry I couldn’t get that,” he told me. “Abbey was on the pot and Tam was hopping up and down waiting his turn.”
“It was Eudora. For me.”
“Anything wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” I leaned up against him, thinking how good such ordinary moments were. “I said I’d go round and have a chat with her.”
“Go on, then.” He touched my face and I knew he understood that Eudora, who spent a big part of her life listening to other people’s problems, sometimes needed to be on the talking end of the conversation. By going out the front door, I avoided interrupting Karisma’s photograph session or having to explain where I was going and being put in the awkward position of not offering to take him with me. It was such a shame when he was so keen on church that the Spikes’ particular circumstances prevented them from being up to welcoming him to the vicarage.
Passing the cottage at the gates, I stared up at the windows and wondered guiltily if Gerta had recovered from last night’s terrors which, while they might seem far-fetched to me, had been very real to her. I’d been dreadfully neglectful in not going down to see how she was doing. It was no excuse that I’d hardly had a free moment to breathe. I vowed that on my way back from the vicarage I would knock on the door, and if there was no answer, I’d go in through a window.
Eudora saved me from opting for that form of entry at the vicarage by opening the door before I rang the bell.
“It’s so good of you to come, Ellie. I don’t know when I’ve been more in need of a friend.” She gave me a hug and bustled me into the comfortably old-fashioned sitting room. “You must have noticed I wasn’t myself the other day when you came over to talk about the redecorating.”
“I did sense that something was a little off kilter, but I hoped there wasn’t anything seriously wrong. We are … that is,” I stammered, “Ben and I are so very fond of you and Gladstone.”
“Thank you, dear.” Eudora gave a wan smile as she gestured for me to sit next to the table set out with coffee for two and one of her husband’s sponge cakes. “It’s about Gladstone that I wish to speak to you.” She took the chair across from mine and stared into the empty fireplace.
“I thought that might be it,” I said.
“I’m usually a very private person, Ellie, but this does involve you.”
“It does?” My hand set down the coffee cup it had just picked up.
“In that it involves your husband.” Eudora turned towards me with a determinedly cheerful look on her face. “You see, Ellie, Gladstone has always admired Ben very much, they share the same interest in cooking, and that’s a special bond between two men. Then, when your cousin Vanessa fainted in church and Ben picked her up so effortlessly, Gladstone told me he realized for the first time how incredibly handsome Ben was and that there were no two ways about it, this was the man he wanted. And he wasn’t going to settle for anyone else.”
“Well, he can’t have Ben!” I flashed back without a thought for poor Eudora’s anguish.
“And there was me thinking”—she gave an embarrassed laugh—“that you’d be rather tickled by the idea.”
“Oh, really?” I was growing just the least bit annoyed. Surely it was one thing for a woman to support her husband in his decision to have a sex-change operation, and quite another to encourage him to latch on to a friend’s husband.
“You’re not a fuddy-duddy like me, Ellie, and I know you love romance novels, so please forgive me if I mistakenly thought you’d enjoy seeing Ben on the cover of what Gladstone’s publishers believe will be a runaway best seller.” She smiled benignly at me.
“I’m very confused,” I said, and proved the point by starting to stand up just as I went to sit down. “Could you please start at the beginning, Eudora, and tell me who your husband is when he isn’t baking the perfect sponge cake or putting together the parish bulletin?”
Chapter
15
“Zinnia Parrish!” Ben was sitting on the edge of the bed the next morning, pulling on his socks. “What sort of name is that for a man?”
“One with lots of sales appeal.” I gave up on brushing my hair, which wasn’t any great sacrifice seeing I had been slacking off on this exercise routine recently and was so badly out of shape that fifty strokes would have done me in. “She—er—Gladstone Spike is one of today’s most popular romance writers. His—her books sell by the ton.”
“We’re talking about paperbacks, right?” Ben took my place at the dressing table and proceeded to comb his hair without breaking a sweat. Neither of us had to rush what we were doing, because Vanessa, intent on changing her image, had volunteered to take care of the twins until we came downstairs.
“There’s no need to turn up your nose,” I told the man in the mirror crossly.
“I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.”
“Yes, you were. People do that all the time. They dismiss romances as not being real books and carry on as though the definition of a literary masterpiece is a novel written in the present tense about people who spend six hundred pages contemplating their navels and that sells all of three copies because only the supremely intelligent can get through the bloody title.”
“Ellie”—my husband came up behind me and pressed his hands over my mouth—“I was not belittling Gladstone Spike’s writing career. When you and I first met I was trying to write a spy novel, remember? And we know how that turned out.”
“You sold a cookery book”—I wriggled away from him—“and a very good one it was too.”
“Thanks, sweetheart, but I seriously doubt it kept anyone up all night turning the pages to see if the beef Wellington made it out of the oven unscathed. To be honest, I’m quite jealous of old Gladstone.”
Now was the moment to inform Ben that if he couldn’t have his name on a novel of his own creation, he might have the opportunity to show up on the cover of the next Zinnia Parrish blockbuster. But something held me back. And I rattled on instead about how amazed I’d been to discover that one of my favourite writers was our friend and neighbour.
“What amazes me”—Ben stood, buttoning his shirt cuffs—“is that you didn’t tell me about this yesterday; I would have expected you to rush home bursting to spill the beans.”
“On the way back from the vicarage”—I turned away from him and started spreading up the bed—“I stopped at the cottage to look in on Gerta. And she was so down in the boots that I spent the better part of an hour trying to persuade her to come up to the house for lunch. But she kept saying she couldn’t risk seeing Karisma because he looks so like her husband she’d immediately have a nervous breakdown.”
“It sounds to me as though she’s already having one.” Ben hung up his black silk dressing gown.
“I’m worried about her.” I finished tucking in my side of the bed. “When Gerta showed me a snapshot of Ernst I saw a heavyset bald man with a moustache and not a glimmer of resemblance to Karisma, whichever way I turned the photo; but that’s love for you. And it got me thinking. Maybe the frog didn’t turn into Prince Charming when the girl in the fairy story kissed him—except in her eyes, that is. So that for fifty years of domestic bliss, until the day he finally croaked, he slept on a lily pad in the bathroom basin. And everywhere they went she introduced him as her tall, handsome husband to women who were petrified he would hop up their skirts and to men who vowed never to touch another drop of Scotch as long as they lived.”
“Rrribit-rrribit” was Ben’s juvenile response to my insightful outpourings.
“I wasn’t talking about you. People are forever telling me how handsome you are.” After plumping up the last of the
pillows I sat down on the bed. “If anyone’s the frog in our relationship, it’s me.”
“Now who’s displaying false modesty?”
“Well, nobody’s ever suggested putting me on the cov—”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” I smiled up at him. “I’ve gone off on a tangent, but back to why I didn’t tell you about Gladstone Spike yesterday. If you think about it, Ben, you’ll realize we never had a moment alone after I got back to the house. Luckily, Bunty Wiseman and the Pouchers had gone. But either Vanessa was in the room, or I was talking to Mrs. Swabucher, who couldn’t hide that she was down in the dumps over her meeting with Brigadier Lester-Smith. The twins constantly required attention from one or the other of us. And of course there was Karisma, who couldn’t be expected to stand around tossing his hair all day. It all proved to be rather exhausting, and by the time we came up to bed, I was practically sleepwalking.”
“It’s interesting about the photographer.” Ben’s voice was muffled by his pulling a sweater over his head.
“You mean that he never showed up?”
“Precisely. As I understand it, Mrs. Swabucher told you at Abigail’s that a camera session, using the exterior of Merlin’s Court as a background, was a major objective in Karisma’s coming down here. Lancelot valiantly defending the castle against the enemies of the realm. But lo and behold—no photographer. And I didn’t sense any major disappointment on either of their parts, did you?”
“No, but as I’ve said, Mrs. Swabucher hasn’t been herself and that would affect Karisma, who seems very fond of her. What’s your point, Ben?”
“That the photography angle was a smokescreen.” Ben flopped down on the bed, placed his hands behind his head, and crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’m wondering if Karisma’s willingness to do your library benefit has anything to do with Gladstone and his books.”
The obvious question. My moment of truth was at hand, and I wished now that I hadn’t dragged my feet. Excuses! Excuses! I could have made time yesterday to put Ben in the picture had I been ready to deal with the realization that I had been hoodwinked.
“It never crossed my mind”—I sat winding the edge of the bedspread through my fingers—“that there was anything odd in Mrs. Swabucher’s insistence that Karisma could make an appearance at the library only this weekend. I was just grateful that he was willing to come at all, particularly after we had received a refusal over the phone. The short notice did make it impossible to advertise the event in a big way, but in a place as small as Chitterton Fells, word spreads like wildfire.” I paused to draw a shaky breath. “Gullible me! I was touched when Mrs. Swabucher said Karisma would want to go to church. No sirens went off inside my head when he asked if we had any close neighbours. But I realize now he often led the conversation around to Gladstone Spike, hoping you or I would offer to make the introduction. And the reason he came down a day early must have been to allow himself extra time to set up the acquaintance.”
“So why did it have to be this weekend?” Ben shifted closer to the edge of the bed and reached for my hand.
“Because, so Eudora told me, Gladstone’s editor had arranged to visit the vicarage to discuss the book in progress. It’s a sequel to a smash best seller by the late Azalea Twilight and there’s been a lot of speculation, mounting almost to a frenzy in the press, owing to the publisher having refused to say who landed the plum job of writing A Knight to Remember. It is also a closely guarded secret that Gladstone is Zinnia Parrish.”
“Then how did Karisma get his information?”
“He was approached about doing the cover.”
“By a woman, may we suppose?” Ben lay back and flickered a glance at me from under his lashes. “One who was so overcome by the fame and fascination of the man that she told him everything he needed to know without realizing she had even opened her mouth. But what I don’t understand, Ellie, is why if Karisma had the cover assignment for A Knight to Remember in his pocket did he go to such lengths to meet Gladstone?”
“There could be all sorts of reasons.” Bouncing off the bed, I marched over to the window and back again.
“Agreed, but what was Eudora’s take on the situation?”
“That Karisma knew that Gladstone was horrified at the prospect of having him do the cover, on the grounds that Karisma bears no physical resemblance to the hero of A Knight to Remember and that such a misrepresentation would violate the integrity of the book. Apparently, Gladstone has created a character whose good looks are defined by elegance rather than untamed magnificence. He is of medium height, with dark curly hair cut to a conventional length, and his eyes are by turns emerald green or midnight blue.”
“So”—practical Ben did not bat an emerald-green eye—“have Karisma put on a wig, a three-piece suit, and bend at the knees.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said crossly, “he couldn’t do that to his image, and Gladstone would never have agreed. Eudora said her husband spent hours—no, days—going through his contract with the publisher, hoping to find a loophole. But he couldn’t find any way round the fact that he had no power of veto where the cover was concerned.” Upon taking a well-earned breath, I remembered the documents I had seen on the coffee table in the vicarage sitting room and how, having let my stupid imagination take over, I had thought they were medical consent forms.
“Eudora explained this has all taken a terrible toll on Gladstone,” I continued. “He must have thought there was some sort of curse on him when the Library League decided to invite Karisma to do the benefit. What rotten timing to have all this going on when he has to go into hospital shortly.”
“Anything serious?”
“He has to be circumcised.”
“Ouch,” said Ben.
“Apparently he should have had it done years ago and Eudora has been feeling extremely frustrated—with the situation, I mean.”
“Are you telling me”—Ben sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed—“that Karisma came hot-footing down here because—being such a sensitive bloke—he’s been losing his beauty sleep over Gladstone’s negative reaction to having him on the cover of a novel?”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s because a couple of days ago Karisma was notified that he wasn’t getting the job after all.”
“I’m not tracking, Ellie.”
“It’s all quite straightforward,” I said. “Gladstone was so royally upset—he couldn’t knit, he couldn’t bake sponge cakes—that he informed his editor he no longer felt obliged to keep his identity a secret. He threatened to go public with the announcement that he was Zinnia Parrish. And immediately that put a whole new spin on the situation.”
“A clever move on our friend’s part.”
“The editor begged Gladstone to reconsider, saying that sales of A Knight to Remember would be drastically reduced were it known to have been written by a man, let alone one who wears grey cardigans and puts out the parish bulletin. But Gladstone stuck to his guns even after his editor sent an enormous bunch of flowers and said he would come down to the vicarage this weekend to discuss a very lucrative deal for the next Zinnia Parrish book. And the day before yesterday Gladstone got word that in return for his agreeing to keep his identity from becoming public knowledge, Karisma would not do the cover.”
“At which time”—Ben stood looking at me from under locked brows—“Mrs. Swabucher got in her car and came buzzing down here to meet you for lunch at Abigail’s. Tell me, sweetheart, don’t you feel that she and her mesmerizing client pulled a pretty dirty stunt?”
“I don’t blame Karisma.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“He couldn’t be expected to tamely walk away from what must have seemed like a professional slap in the face. He’s the most celebrated cover model in the world, and A Knight to Remember is a major book. But …” Turning away from Ben, I fiddled with the candlesticks on the mantelpiece. “I am a little hurt that Mrs. Swabucher used her relationship with us to tr
y and get to Gladstone.”
“You could take some satisfaction,” Ben responded gently, “knowing the plan failed.”
“Lots of things went wrong from the beginning,” I said, “such as his staff being taken ill. And I really do think he wanted a photographer here, because Eudora told me Gladstone modeled the home of the hero in A Knight to Remember on Merlin’s Court. So for Karisma to produce photos of himself posing with such authenticity of background would have been a real plus.”
“He was again out of luck when he insisted on knocking at the vicarage yesterday.” Ben did not evince sympathy. “It did strike me he was not nearly so keen on looking in on choir practice last night after you mentioned the Spikes would be gone for the evening.”
“He intends to go to church this morning,” I said, “but Eudora told me Gladstone would be taking a miss this once because the editor is arriving before lunch, and that’s something we have to talk about, Ben.”
“Lunch?”
“No, the editor.” I dropped down in a chair, stretched out my legs, and studied my feet. “Gladstone wants you to meet this man and overwhelm him with your photogenic possibilities. Now why are you looking so blank?” I said as kindly as possible. “Surely you grasp what I’m telling you. The editor in his present conciliatory mood wants to make Gladstone happy. And Gladstone wants you on the cover of A Knight to Remember.”
“You’re joking?”
“According to Eudora, you are the hero made flesh.”
“I am?” Ben studied his reflection in the dressing table mirror with a disturbingly self-satisfied smile on his face.
“Gladstone came to this startling revelation when Vanessa fainted in the church and you swept her up in your manly arms.”
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams Page 24
