How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams

by Dorothy Cannell

  Eudora opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out, Bunty giggled mischievously.

  “Don’t tell me you go for the hot and heavy ones by authors like Zinnia Parrish? I’m not what you’d call naïve by a long shot, but let me tell you, I’ve learned a thing or two from reading that woman’s books.”

  I think it occurred to Eudora and me at the same moment that we had been slacking off long enough. And this was particularly naughty given the fact that we were short so many Library League members. I had yet to see Mr. Poucher. No one could expect poor widowed Sylvia to show up. And I did not have any great hopes that Brigadier Lester-Smith would change his mind about not coming.

  It was time to elbow our way through the panting press of humanity and assist Sir Robert and Mrs. Dovedale in any last-minute preparations for Karisma’s imminent arrival. When we reached the reception desk, Bunty left us to go upstairs to the reading room to make sure, she informed us, that the lemonade had not gone off. I was tempted to offer my services in sampling the cream cakes, for the purpose of determining that they did not pose a health risk to the unwary. But just as Eudora left me and headed for the main door to offer to spell Sir Robert at collecting the admission fees, I turned and collided with Mr. Poucher.

  He did not seem overly enthused to see me. Indeed, I had never seen him look more like a wet washday in November. His raincoat was too big for him, suggesting he had dropped a couple of sizes since yesterday. His eyes were sunk in his head and he shuffled his feet as he went to move past me as if I were invisible to him in the fog that swirled around him.

  “Hello, Mr. Poucher!” I caught hold of his elbow as he was about to incur the ire of the tyrannous lady librarian by bumping into the desk and sending her Overdue stamp flying.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he responded in a voice that was devoid of inflection and stared through me into the bleak beyond. “I’m late, but I don’t guess everyone’s been breaking their hearts.…”

  “What’s the matter?” I matched my tread to his halting steps while leading him towards a gap in the crowd. “Something has happened. Is Heathcliff”—my mind conjured up the unsettling image of an entire roomful of furniture being devoured in a single lip-smacking gulp, to be followed shortly thereafter by a request for a canine indigestion tablet—“is Heathcliff the problem?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with the dog; he’s the one comfort left to me.” Mr. Poucher trod on a woman’s foot and vouchsafed no reaction to her yelp of pain. “The problem, if you must know, Mrs. Haskell, is my mother.”

  “She’s been taken ill?”

  “Worse than that!”

  “Oh, Mr. Poucher!” I pressed a hand to my throat. “You have my deepest sympathy.”

  “I’m going to need it, right enough.” His eyes suddenly snapped to life. And while I was still thinking rigor mortis, he enlightened me. “Mother’s suffered a serious setback. She’s relapsed into good health.”

  “What?”

  “She bounded out of bed this morning like she was a slip of a girl and she’s been on the go ever since. Singing like a lark all the time she was scrubbing the kitchen floor. Then, when she was done with that, she turned out the front room, took down the curtains to wash, polished the brass, made a batch of potato scones, milked the cows, and dug over the patch of garden I’d given over to weeds. All before I was done shaving.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “Then, when we sat down to our midday meal. Ma made some very ugly threats.” Mr. Poucher’s face clouded over to the extent that I expected it to start raining inside the library. And I’m almost sure I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes. “She told me she’d changed her mind about dying anytime in the near future. And if I didn’t do like she told me, when she told me, she may up and decide not to die at all.”

  I was speechless.

  “And we know, don’t we, Mrs. Haskell, who’s to blame?”

  “Her doctor?”

  Mr. Poucher’s weary shake of head suggested I was the one in need of medical attention. “That buggering chap Karisma, he had to make over Mother, didn’t he? Fussing and cooing at her like she was the first rose of summer. Going on, fit to make you spit, about how he loves all women irregardless of whether they was nineteen or ninety-two. He brought her back to life with a kiss on the lips, she says, like she was Sleeping Beauty and he was Prince Charming. Can you believe such vile talk?” Mr. Poucher drew an ugly breath. “Just wait till I set eyes on the interfering bounder!”

  The hot words had not cooled on his lips, when a frenzied roar of “Karisma!” went through the room like a gale-force wind, and the mob surged forward intent, I thought with a flicker of alarm, on all the excesses of idolatry. My eyes sought out Mrs. Swabucher without success. In the process I lost sight of Mr. Poucher, and anyway I forgot about him instantly in the shock of seeing Sylvia Babcock, just two women away from me. I didn’t get to speak to her there and then because the Nazi librarian rose to the occasion. Mounting the reception desk, she stood feet apart and gave three blasts of the whistle Miss Bunch had been known to keep handy for the purpose of scaring a book thief into dropping his stash. The crowd hushed, though eyes everywhere gleamed with lust.

  Order being peremptorily restored and a warning delivered that no further outbursts would be tolerated, Mrs. Harris resumed her seat. With creditable aplomb Sir Robert Pomeroy paraded Karisma down the aisle formed between rows of people lined up like trees, to the desk where he was going to sign books. The desk was to the right of the arch, the one that led into Nonfiction. And above that arch was the bust of Shakespeare. It suddenly struck me as funny that William Shakespeare should be looking over Karisma’s muscled shoulders while he was autographing. Funny and … I never got to decide what else, because a heavily made-up woman in a sequined hat and a crushed-velvet frock glared at me from under pencilled brows and told me that if I was thinking of jumping the queue, I had another think coming.

  “Mrs. Malloy!” I stepped backwards in case she decided to make her position clearer yet by bopping me on the head with her armload of paperbacks. “I thought you might have decided not to come.”

  “Am I to take that as meaning you’d just as soon I’d stayed away, Mrs. H.?” Bridling, so that a button popped off the front of her frock and scored a hit. The woman in front of us nipped smartly out of the queue, making for only forty-five heads currently in front of us.

  “Of course I wanted you to come,” I said.

  “Well, that does ease me mind.” A sigh that produced another bull’s-eye, moving us up yet again. “For a moment there I thought I’d become something of an embarrassment to you, on account of my George winning that sword fight all fair and square. I suppose, Mrs. H., you think I should have told him it was only good manners to let his opponent win, seeing as the other lad didn’t have his mother there to buck him up.”

  “The only reason I thought you might stay away,” I said, “was that it occurred to me you would possibly prefer to spend the afternoon with George; especially as Vanessa was going to be gone for a while and he had kindly volunteered to look after the twins.”

  “What, and miss me outing?” Mrs. Malloy looked suitably shocked. “Just what sort of a parent would I be, when all’s said and done, if I didn’t know the difference between mother love and smother love? The day comes, Mrs. H., when it’s time for mummy bird to fly the nest.”

  “And not leave a forwarding address? You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Malloy. Believe me, I’m getting ready to cut the bib strings any day now.” We were now close enough to the front of the queue to see a woman in a strident orange frock lunge across the desk to grab at a handful of Karisma’s flowing tresses and press them to her cheek.

  “I can’t believe I’m seeing you in the flesh!” Her voice was choked with emotion … and possibly a hank of hair. “You’re even more fabulous than in your pictures. I’ve read every book you’ve ever been on. Miss Bunch used to phone me whenever the library got a new one in. A friend gave me yo
ur exercise tape for Christmas and I’m going to splurge and buy your calendar.”

  “When it comes out in paperback, I’ll bet.” Mrs. Malloy nudged me with her elbow.

  “I lorve women.” Karisma was beginning to sound as if he were rubber-stamping the words. But who could blame him? Certainly not the woman in orange, who told him (at considerable length) that he had helped her through a bad marriage, the death of a beloved Pekingese, and a rift with her next-door neighbour. Finally, in all likelihood after getting a kick in the shins, she was supplanted by an equally loquacious fan.

  “I’m beginning to think I’ve got it easy scrubbing other people’s toilets for a living,” sighed Mrs. Malloy. “This celebrity business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, I’m on the brink of changing me mind about going on the stage. Strictly between you and me, Mrs. H., because I wouldn’t want George upsetting himself, it was a shock when Karisma went flying into that ditch.”

  “It’s a blessing he wasn’t badly hurt.”

  “Well, I was!” Mrs. Malloy’s glower told me what she thought of my gross lack of sensitivity. “Something in me died at that moment, but I don’t suppose you’ve got a clue what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, I have!” I fired back at her. “I’d been working up to the realization ever since he arrived at the house; but until the moat incident, I hadn’t fully acknowledged that in meeting Karisma I’d lost”—I blinked back tears—“my first true love. Being me, I had a little more trouble than some getting over him, even after I married my wonderful Ben. The great thing about the dream lover is there’s no emotional risk. Should you ever get angry with him, or heaven forbid momentarily bored, you can close the book on him whenever you choose. Face it: You’re committed to the relationship only for several hundred pages.”

  “And now here’s me wondering if Karisma has a mother who understands him.” Mrs. Malloy inched forward in the queue. “Oh, I know he’s got his Mrs. Swabucher, but that’s not the same, is it? By the way, where is she?”

  “Somewhere around.” I peered into the crowd, but my only glimpse of pink was Eudora’s cardigan. Just as I was about to say that perhaps Mrs. Swabucher made a point of keeping in the background at these events, Mrs. Malloy gave me another of her nudges.

  “Now, this is a surprise!”

  “What is?”

  “Use your eyes, Mrs. H.!” Exasperated snort. “That’s Ione Tunbridge, all in black as usual, about a dozen places ahead of us. Imagine her showing up in broad daylight! Could be that little talk with you the other night, Mrs. H., helped her clear away some of the cobwebs from that spooky old attic she calls a mind.”

  “One legend meets another.” I watched as Miss Tunbridge stepped up to the desk and inclined her black-bonneted head to speak to Karisma.

  “She does look like a bloody bird of prey.” Mrs. Malloy shifted the load of books in her arms. “I’ll bet she’s got talons six inches long under those crocheted gloves of hers, but I don’t see as why you’ve got that look on your face, like she just walked over your grave.”

  “I think I’m ready for a cream cake,” I told her, not wishing to dwell on the point, even in my own mind, that Miss Tunbridge who lived at Tall Chimneys might have brought something of its disturbing past into the library with her. Surprisingly, I hadn’t thought about Hector Rigglesworth until now. And there was a reason for that, I realized. When Karisma had gone crashing into the moat, I’d had no doubt that he was dead. But when he was found to have suffered no injuries beyond the bump on the head and the mark on his throat, my reaction was more than straightforward relief on his behalf. I was able to tell myself that the deaths of Miss Bunch and Mr. Babcock were an unhappy fact of life and in no way related to a century-old curse. But here I was, suffering a setback. What I had to do, I decided, was get out of this queue before I began wondering if Miss Tunbridge had been telling the truth the other night about murdering her bridegroom-to-be and burying him on what had once been Hector Rigglesworth’s property. Although, I brightened up, if one were to go by the old adage that the third time is the charm, it would be reasonable to suppose that with the death of Mr. Babcock, Hector Rigglesworth would be ready to set aside old grudges and vanish permanently into the next world.

  I explained to Mrs. Malloy that I had merely been keeping her company in the queue and that it was time for me to assist my fellow library members in seeing that the refreshments would be ready when Karisma finished autographing. Far from begging me not to leave her, she displayed no emotion whatsoever, which is more than could be said of me when I bumped into Sylvia Babcock a couple of seconds later and saw who was standing next to her.

  “Gerta! What made you decide to come?”

  “This morning I am making strudel in the kitchen at the cottage, Frau Haskell”—she stood with her braided head held high and a glow on her face that could not be purchased at any cosmetics counter—“and I know there has to be more to life than standing in one place. The tears they are all used up. I have to accept the truth that my marriage is over and put Ernst behind me. But before that is possible, I must to face the memory of him one last time. To see him in his new life”—she spread her hands—“that is too hard, and looking at photographs is not enough.”

  “So you decided to take a close-up look at Karisma who,” I added for Sylvia’s benefit in case she wasn’t in the know, “reminds you so much of your husband. That was very brave of you.”

  “It is not so hard after all.” Gerta smiled, showing dimples I had never before seen. “Not nearly so bad as what Frau Babcock suffers, and yet she is here.”

  “I had to get out of the house!” Not one of Sylvia’s pin curls was out of place, and there wasn’t a crease in her green-and-white-striped frock despite the crush of people, but her voice trembled on the brink of hysteria. “I thought I’d feel better if I was around people, but half the time I can’t stop shaking. I keep hearing people talking about it—how Albert died so soon after we got married … I don’t know how much more I can take without going completely to pieces and shouting at them to shut up!”

  “People can be insensitive. Why don’t I go and get you a glass of lemonade?” I suggested, and hurried towards the door that opened into the little corridor with its staircase leading up to the meeting room. In my haste I barely acknowledged handsome, silver-haired Lionel Wiseman’s greeting. Nor did I waste much time on a double take when I noticed Mrs. Swabucher, looking quite smart in a pale rose suit, standing up against the fiction stacks in conversation with Brigadier Lester-Smith. So he had changed his mind about coming! Splendid. But knowing him to be a man who would strive to do his duty under the most difficult of circumstances, I wasn’t greatly surprised.

  When I was halfway up the stairs I saw Mr. Poucher start down from the top and in passing him—something that Mrs. Malloy, who was given to her superstitious moments, had told me brought the worst of bad luck—I asked him if he had remembered to bring back the coffeepot cord.

  “It’s in my raincoat pocket,” he muttered as he rushed down the last of the steps. “I don’t have time to dilly-dally, Mrs. Haskell, I just looked out the window and saw Heathcliff sitting next to the dustbins outside the back door.”

  “You mean he followed you here?” My knees trembled out of all proportion to this latest doggy escapade as I leaned over the banister. And in a weak attempt at hiding my ridiculous fear that Heathcliff had all along been an emissary from beyond the grave, I said I hoped Mrs. Poucher had put him in a taxi rather than let him make the long walk from the farm.

  “I reckon she purposely forgot to feed the old lad.” Her son’s bitterness wafted up to me in almost tangible form, rather like stale air released from a room that has been locked up for too many years. But seconds later sunlight—along with Heathcliff—rushed into the corridor when Mr. Poucher opened the door. To give credit where due, the dog restrained himself from raucous barking. Indeed, he did no more than whimper piteously as he wound himself around his master’s leg
s.

  “Do I have your solemn promise to behave yourself if I let you come upstairs with me?” Upon receiving a woof of acquiescence from the black beast, Mr. Poucher’s glum expression softened. He looked up at me. “If you’ll agree to keep mum, Mrs. Haskell, there’s none as will be the wiser if I tuck him away behind that little cupboard in the corner of the reading room.”

  “My lips are sealed,” I assured him, having fought off my attack of silliness. “But if Mrs. Harris finds him, we’ll all be in the soup.”

  Fortunately for Heathcliff, we encountered no problem in spiriting him upstairs. Sir Robert and Mrs. Dovedale were positioned squarely in front of the long table that was laid out as if in readiness for a wedding banquet. But they posed no problem, being locked in an embrace that showed no sign of unclenching as Mr. Poucher and Heathcliff tiptoed across the reading room. It was as well, however, that they acted speedily. Within seconds of the dog disappearing behind the cabinet, on the top of which lay Mrs. Swabucher’s feather boa, the kissing couple was jolted apart by the sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs. Before Mr. Poucher and I had finished exchanging a relieved glance, people poured into the room as if eager to seize it for king and country. And I could see that the corridor was jampacked with those who had not made the first rush to the stairs.

  For at least ten minutes I was kept occupied alongside Mrs. Dovedale pouring lemonade until the last jug ran dry. The first person to whom I handed a cup was Mrs. Swabucher. I asked her if she would like an extra one for Karisma.