Mum's the Word

by Dorothy Cannell

  Quick! Grab for a change of topic. “This must be a busy time for you, but at least you are down two with the Groggs gone. Who took them to Mud Creek?”

  “Wasn’t me. So what’s your guess?”

  “I …” Backing away from her serving spoon.

  “And don’t hold your breath for any of the candidates to own up that they stuck their oar in the river. You heard the rules about none of them being allowed to leave the island. All you auxilliary folk have played dumb, so the only one left would be her.”

  “Valicia X?”

  “Not likely! She’s afraid of water.”

  “I see … Mary …” Dragging out one of the throne chairs, I sat in solitary splendour at the table. Some habits are hard to break. I was worrying about Ben. Would he have been so rash as to row the Groggs to freedom had he spotted them standing forlorn on the shore when he went down to the boathouse for our luggage? Acts of derring do appeal to him.

  “Food not good enough for you?” Jeffries was at my shoulder with the coffee pot.

  “Delicious!”

  “Always stare at the wall, do you?”

  “No.” I removed my elbow from something soggy. “Last night I happened to glance in here and there were six swashbuckler knives on that wall. Now there are only three.”

  A bloodcurdling scream ripped from Jeffries’ lips. I caught the coffee pot just in time. She was hopping from foot to foot, face twisted into the rage of a gnome who comes home to find all his spells stolen. “First someone tampering with the rules and now this! Those knives were used in Melancholy Mansion!”

  “Really!” I gripped the seat of my chair. “Do you mind my asking if you often give that scream?”

  “Primal yell. Psychiatrist’s orders. Sometimes I can go days without giving vent but I was overcome twice by the healthy impulse last night and—”

  Her next words were lost. The room did not possess an electric ceiling fan, but suddenly it was as though one were turned on full blast. Two of my plates leaped in the air and the coffee pot went into another skid. We had been invaded by the ubiquitous pigeon. Our feathered friend must have been hiding behind the curtains, eavesdropping on our conversation. But what was this …? I was seeing double! There were two of them. Around they went in a power play, beating me into the submission position, arms over my head.

  Jeffries to the rescue! “Cool it, Derby! And you too, Joan! Or I swear I’ll break your legs.”

  Tamely the two birds perched on the curtain rod, fixing their beady eyes upon us, as if to say: “What fools these mortals be.”

  Behind us, I heard a door close.

  Collecting my shoulder bag from my room, I had second thoughts about the excursion to Mud Creek. Two’s company, three’s a crowd when one of the trio is down in the dumps. Ernestine and Solange would be all buddy-buddy with good cheer, whispering middle-age secrets, and giggling at the latest divorce jokes. I would laugh dutifully in the wrong places. And they would nudge each other. Perhaps tap their foreheads. Honestly, did I need this? A woman can only take so much abandonment. All by way of saying that my reason for going along to Mary Faith’s room and knocking on her door was not altruistic. I needed the solace of her wounded smile, the uplift of her plaintive voice.

  “Come in.”

  The invitation was every bit as unenthusiastic as I could have wished, and the room exactly as I remembered from last night. A place reserved for layings-out and lyings-in. The massive wardrobe was the gateway to the secret room. The dun-coloured curtains were drawn back against the wall—doubtless a job for two strong men. The dark furniture would seem to have been bought for weight, like coal, at so much a ton. The inert form in the middle of the Henry VIII four-poster bed surely had to be Mary. Pepys and Jeffries couldn’t keep disrupting their busy schedules to slip something vile under their employer’s sheets.

  When a hand edged back the bed-hanging cordoned by gold rope, I suppressed a whimper.

  “Put my tea on the table and stay out until I ring again. You’re dealing with the woman who has been reviewed in The New York Times and twice invited on Good Evening, U.S.A. I’m no longer the child who can be threatened with the dryer.”

  None but Mary. As she sat up, I nearly screamed. The sun zeroed in cruelly upon her mashed beehive and face slathered in masklike cream. She had no mouth and dark holes where her glasses should have been. They lay next to the phone upon a nightstand on the side of the bed furthest from the door. Obviously she took me for Pepys or Jeffries even though squinting my way. And, true to form, I felt guilty—as though I had crept in upon her under false pretenses. Poor Mary. I could hear my cousin Vanessa or Valicia X remarking admiringly, “No one is born that plain, they have to really work at it.” The long-sleeved nightdress Mary wore was demure to the point of being hopeful.

  “It’s me, Ellie Haskell!” I tiptoed forward, my bag slapping against my side. “Sorry to barge in like this, but I wondered if you would care to go into Mud Creek. Several of us—”

  “What, me!” She flinched back against the headboard. “Do you really mean me?” She reached for a tissue but did not burst into tears. Instead she set to scrubbing the white muck off her face. Kicking off the saffron sheets and tapestried spread in a coltish flurry, she stood up. “Theola always drilled into me that I didn’t have what it takes to make friends; but I knew last night you and I were soulmates. You have that same downtrodden air that I have.”

  “Thank you.” I tried to look gratified.

  “On you it looks good.” Mary tossed aside the tissue. “Hand me my bathrobe, will you, sweetie. Oh, this is so merry—like the morning after a slumber party! Lunch will be my treat.”

  “Oh, no!” I protested.

  “You’re right. Best friends always go Dutch. Will we have the other two tagging along with us all day?”

  Bother. I couldn’t spot the dressing gown among the clothes tumbled on chairs and spilling over the window ledge, and I was beginning to suspect that Mary was developing a schoolgirl crush on me. A fine time for my mother’s words to come back to haunt me: Ellie darling, if you really want to be popular become a recluse. That way you are a name on a thousand tongues, you get invited to parties no one expects you to attend, the merest glimpse of you causes a stir, and you never have to deal with people.

  Trailing across a grizzly bear rug to the black marble fireplace and back, I almost tripped over the dressing gown’s dangling cord. I attempted to hand it to her but she was putting on her glasses. And the phone rang. We both stared at it as though unable to believe our ears.

  “Jeffries said there wasn’t one,” I sounded accusatory.

  Brrrrrr! Brrrrrrr!

  Mary, the grease turning her face sallow as melted butter, sidestepped toward the nightstand, reached out a hand and … stood rubbing it. “A phone, you mean!” Her eyes fixed on it, she took one step forward, two back. “Mangés speak with forked tongue! Valicia X didn’t want any of the candidates to know there was one lest someone cheat and contact outside sources for help.”

  The phone continued to bleat. “Would you like me to get that?” I offered. “I imagine you have been besieged by reporters.”

  “Yes, that must be who it is! Or someone from my publisher …” Her expression eased, but she lifted the receiver as though it were a dead rat. “Hello?” Before my eyes she shrank, incredible as it sounds, to child-size. Suddenly I could picture her with pigtails, wearing a panama hat like I had worn to St. Roberta’s. I hovered forward with her bathrobe as she slithered down onto the edge of the bed.

  “Theola!” She gripped the phone with both hands, her knuckles turning blue. Oh, dear! I didn’t like the sound of her breathing! I wished I had a tank of oxygen handy or at least Primrose Tramwell’s smelling salts. I also wished I hadn’t cracked my shin on the knight’s chest at the bottom of the bed. But never mind that! Mary was sitting up straighter. Her mouth had firmed up and there was a gutsy sparkle to her glasses.

  “Enough with that cute stuff, Theo
la, where the hell are you?” Her voice shot up shrilly. “Guess? Why should I? I won’t be drawn into your devilish game … All right—Florida! What do you mean stone cold? Miami is never … damn it, you’ve done it to me again, made me the butt end of one of your stupid jokes! But to show there’s no hard feelings”—her laugh came out in a rush like a shaken up fizzy drink—“why don’t you let me buy you a nice little place in the country, a mausoleum in Happy Meadows Cemetery? I can afford it. The millions I’m making from Monster Mommy are almost as obscene as your fling with the Tarzooki boys—father, son and grandpa. What do you mean I should shut up while there’s still time? How do you plan to make me shut up—put my toys down the garbage disposal? No, I will not recant.” Mary’s voice now came in jerks. “You did too ruin my sixth birthday insisting that my hair be dyed to match yours and we dress alike so we could pretend to be sisters. Everyone thought I was your little old grandma.” Mary’s laboured breathing could surely be heard all the way to Mud Creek. “You listen to me, Theola—or would you like it in writing in the sequel? Either you treat me as an adult, entitled to form my own opinions—one being that you have a heart of stone and a brain of silicone—or there is no hope what-so-ever of our ever being able to relate.… What’s that? You are going to sue me for every penny I’ve made on Monster Mommy? Don’t make me laugh!” A laugh heavily laced with hysteria. “Your days as a comedienne are over, Theola Faith.”

  “Maybe I should leave,” I ventured.

  “No, please!” Mary pressed a hand over the receiver. Her face was greasy pale.

  Aware I must keep up my strength, I sat down in a chair with lion’s head knobs.

  “So it’s threats now is it!” Mary wrenched to her feet, her chest heaving under the maidenly nightgown; somehow she had managed to wrap herself in the telephone cord. “Come again … you’d like to do what to me? Hold on one minute! Why don’t you repeat that for a witness—the bit about tucking me up for the night in the trunk of your car and sending me rock-a-bye-bye over the edge of a cliff.” Hands shaking, Mary held out the receiver to me, nearly strangling herself in the attempt.

  Scrambling up, I was uncertain whether I would be helping or hindering by lending an ear, but Mary’s cry—“Ellie, listen to her. She means what she’s saying!” broke through my British reserve.

  “Too late! She hung up.” Mary’s eyes took on a blank stare. The receiver dropped from her hand and she fell against me. Awkwardly I patted her shoulder. “There, there!” I said over her heaving sobs.

  “If only I could have pried out of her where she is staying. The more states between us, the safer I feel.” The face that lifted to meet mine looked truly terrified. “You don’t know what she can be like! I must get away from here at once.” She dodged over to the wardrobe, opened the door, and let it hang.

  “No!” She pressed fingers to her temples, shifting the wing-tipped glasses upward. “The new Mary Faith—the darling of the literary circuit—does not turn tail and run. Ellie, I am as safe on this island as anywhere. And one thing I can put a stop to.” She trod firmly over to the nightstand. “You won’t be calling back, Monster Mommy!” On the last word, she savagely yanked the telephone cord out of the wall.

  She’d certainly made a truth teller out of Jeffries. There now was no telephone at Mendenhall.

  “Ellie, do you mind if I don’t join you in going into Mud Creek?”

  Mary lay back down on the tapestry spread, eyes closed, completely rigid, causing, I am ashamed to say, the words of a music hall style ditty to creep up on me … “Oh, she do make a love-rly corpse, she do, her face the sweetest shade of blue …”

  Drawing the dun-coloured curtains against the false heartiness of the sun, I thought it was a pity that someone didn’t murder Theola Faith.

  The ride across to Mud Creek in the cabin cruiser brought out all Pepys’ charm. His ebony suit bathed in greenish light, his narrowed lids revealing slivers of white, he was a drowned soul risen from the watery depths. Conversation was desultory among the passengers, who included in addition to Solange, Ernestine, and myself, Henderson Brown. Perhaps it was his gloomy face under the white linen hat which strengthened the mood of a ghost ship, never destined to reach shore.

  The sun fired up the sky, and before we had covered half the distance, my back threatened to crack from the heat and my eyebrows had been singed off. A flicker of wind faded quickly. Spray roused by the boat stung my face, but did not cool it. The river was as smooth as brown bottle glass, except for the occasional pop-plop of a wave.

  I tried to focus on the scenery—the limestone cliffs to the rear, bristling with trees on top, like a Mohawk haircut. Easy to imagine Indians scouting up there when Mud Creek was only a settlement. Ah, here came the shore, rushing toward us like an unwanted destiny. Through gaps in the buildings I could see cornfields beyond … and part of a red barn. Away to the right was a white clapboard church. Same puritan tranquility as I had spotted on the drive from Boston. Now I could see the mud track where we had parked the car. The trees were pretty. But you can only stretch appreciation so far. The petrol station wasn’t cute, the Lucky Strike bowling alley wasn’t quaint, and Jimmy’s Bar looked like a warehouse. Suddenly Henderson Brown was treading on my heels in his haste to leave the boat.

  Clustered with my fellow voyagers on the dock, I heard the motor burst back into life and watched Pepys head the boat back to Mendenhall. He’d said something about returning for us, but I’d missed the details. I felt lifeless. A piece of driftwood washed upon the shore. And when next I looked, there I was on the corner of Main Street and an alley, inhabited by rubbish bins, being investigated by a cat. The resemblance to Tobias was no stronger than two ears, four legs and a good set of whiskers. But I felt the urge to kidnap him and … I was back in my body—such as it was, with a morning to kill and a husband …

  The others were agreeing to split up and regroup at Jimmy’s Bar at one o’clock. Fighting down the childish urge to beg Ernestine to let me tag along while she went shopping for sunscreen, I swung my bag over my shoulder. Really, Ellie! You should be wearing one of those unaccompanied minor tags the airlines provide for children travelling alone.

  Yesterday I’d experienced the feeling that Mud Creek was shut down, awaiting a gun fight. Now I wondered if its good citizens were down for their midmorning naps. Ernestine, the comtesse, and Henderson Brown were gone. Was the one traffic light permanently stuck on red? No, a pickup truck cruised around a corner, driven by a youth wearing a baseball cap. A giant of a man in work overalls came out of nowhere to go bulldozing up the broken-down steps of the diner with its cardboard menu in the window. The spring door banged behind him. Did a teeming shadow life exist behind all these dusty windows?

  My brains were frying along with the rest of me, but I was to be sent a sign. It swung above the door of a sagging grey house that had been turned into a shop. Nelga’s Fashions, with the One Size Fits All frock in the window. An inspection of my split skirt convinced me I needed this place almost as much as it needed me.

  A blunt-faced woman with cropped hair sat on a kitchen chair with her back to a rack of print and check garments.

  “You looking for anything in particular?” She uncrossed her legs but didn’t stand up.

  “Something in maternity.” I hovered by the counter, cluttered with toy animals. “Perhaps I’m jumping the gun somewhat, I’m only four months. What do you think?”

  “Go right ahead and look.” From the sound of her she disapproved of people buying anything, but—the world being what it is—nothing’s gonna stop the offenders; so might as well make it legal. “Find something that suits, ten percent off the sticker price.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mind my saying, love the way you talk.”

  “Thank you.”

  She recrossed her legs. “My grandmother used to talk that broken English. Came over as a girl from Li-ces-ter-shire, I think it was. You know anyone named Wright?”

  “I�
��m sorry …” There went my discount.

  “You passing through, or did you come with that Mangé group?” She made them sound as if they came in a packet with instructions for French onion dip on the back.

  Shifty-eyed, as though confessing to membership in Jesse James’s gang, I admitted the association.

  “Tell me”—she reached over to a dish of mints—“what sort of goings-on is there … over to Devil’s Island?”

  “I really can’t say.”

  She juggled the mints in her hand. “Dice you into egg noodles, would they—if you squeal?”

  “Nothing like that.” I was rifling through the rack of skirts with elastic fronts. “Society regulations demand absolute secrecy.”

  “What?” She tilted her chair around on one leg to face me. “Passwords and contracts signed in blood—that sort of screwy business?”

  I had nothing against her curiosity. It was, after all, perfectly natural. A healthy interest aroused by the possibility of unhealthy practices. Such attitudes abound. They explain the enormous success of books such as Monster Mommy. But all this talk of the Mangés was reminding me of that most covert of all operations—the … don’t think ‘undercover’ … secret doings between Valicia X and my husband. On the verge of crying all over a candy-striped dress with a huge pink bow, I scooped it up along with several skirts and smocks and told Nelga Fashions that the Mangés might sign in gravy, but not blood.

  One o’clock was still an hour out of reach; so on returning to the pavement I did a daring thing. I walked into the Scissor Cut, took deep breaths of hairspray and decided I was in luck.

  My mission in the Scissor Cut was to be transformed from Before into After. I did not have Valicia X’s flawless face and figure. My hair lacked amber highlights. But it was longer than Valicia’s, and in a blaze of insight I knew that my marriage was salvageable. I was not compelled to tie Ben up with a red ribbon and hand him over to that woman. All I needed to do was get rid of my split ends.