Mum's the Word

by Dorothy Cannell

  “M-U-R-D-E-R.” His jungle print shirt and khaki shorts turned the fat boy into a big game hunter. “You’re quite right, Mom, for once. Even people with average I.Q.’s could see this is no accident.” His spectacles could not conceal that he was pop-eyed with excitement. And could that be for the best of all reasons! Was the nightmare about to have a happy ending after all? Hands clenched, I jumped up and down, almost knocking Valicia X over. Marjorie Rumpson was plowing to shore, a gull skimming above her wake as she towed in … oh, no! Not Mary but Ben. Understand, I was pleased to have him restored to dry land, strongly denying that he had at any time, for so much as a second, lost consciousness. But the realization that Mary Faith would appear to be no more was a bitter pill to swallow.

  We stood there in the gloaming, Marjorie pulling on her frock, Ben wringing out his trouser legs. Pepys removed his black tie, and handed it to Jeffries, who, standing on tiptoe, tied it around his arm. “Ain’t it always the same, a death in the household and you’re never prepared.” Her smirk reminded me of Judy bashing Punch over the head.

  “Perhaps she isn’t dead,” I heard myself say. “Couldn’t she have changed her mind about visiting her mother and returned to the house?”

  “Impossible,” said Valicia firmly. “To reach either door to the house she would have had to pass near the barbecue area. We would have seen her.”

  Eyes burning in skull sockets, Pepys smacked his lips. “I’m the one to blame!”

  “You blew up the boat?” Ernestine grabbed up Bingo.

  “I ain’t no vandal, ma’am! What I meant …”

  Jeffries shut her cohort up with a well-placed elbow. “What you meant to say, you old gizzard, is you spilled the beans to Miss Theola Faith last night. Going up the fire escape stairs to her apartment, you said there was a barbecue planned for five o’clock this evening. I heard you. And this afternoon she tells you to give Miss Mary the message about coming over.”

  Yes, how considerate of Monster Mommy to pick a time when Mary would almost certainly make the crossing unaccompanied because everyone else was at the party.

  “Don’t you be speaking for me!” Pepys wagged a moon-white finger at Jeffries. “I didn’t violate the Mangé code speaking of the barbecue, and I ain’t ready to toss the boss lady to the wolves. Not yet. What I say is we should’ve reasoned with Miss Mary. Tied her up and stuck a gag in her mouth. Thought about it when I saw her leaving, but was afraid the rain would start in and the salad’d be soup.”

  Arms folded, Jeffries flashed him a congratulatory smile. “So she’s gone and the meal’s a bust anyway. What a Fourth of July. Enough to turn you unpatriotic.”

  Valicia X crossed in front of Ben and me, pausing a moment to touch his arm, and trod a few steps closer to the river. Her flame-coloured frock ruffled about her legs. High heels resisting the mud, she cupped a hand to her Grecian brow. “No sign of activity across the water. The inhabitants of Mud Creek must all be in the local bar celebrating our having blown ourselves up with a firecracker. That the Mangé Society should be linked to anything this unsavoury is beyond belief.”

  “Let’s look on the bright side!” Ernestine winked and thumbed toward Bingo. “The boat may have blown up by accident.”

  Marjorie, still shaking herself like a dog coming out of the water, beamed. “Absolutely!”

  “Squaws speak with stupid tongues.” Bingo folded his meaty arms. “Wigwam of the Water sabotaged.”

  Hair matted to her cheeks, his mother wiped a spatter of rain off her nose. “Honey, must I tell you again? Murder is no joke.”

  “Let’s not forget ‘innocent until proven guilty’!” I pressed my hands to my middle. Not quite the same as covering the baby’s ears, but the best I could do. “No mother in her right mind …”

  Ben put an arm around me; Jeffries flashed a smirk that lit up her gnome features. “You’re right. Every member of the jury will have read Monster Mommy. She’ll get off with insanity.”

  “We must notify the police.” Valicia’s eyes singled out Ben. Rain had moisturized her face to pearly perfection. How could he do less for his Lady Mangé than take a boat out into the stormy waters? I didn’t want him to go; when he shifted his arm, I felt like a tree trying to stand without roots. The sky hung low as though someone had emptied a Hoover bag up there. A fragment of the motor boat still blazed on the grey waters. The wind not only snatched at our clothes, it lifted Ben’s voice, carried it off—so that an echo did the talking.

  “Look!” He directed his free hand toward a motor boat zooming our way amidst the lashing of spray. “Isn’t that the Coast Guard?”

  A unanimous “Maybe!” And in time of need, a boat is a boat for a’ that. We made a shrieking rush to shore. Pepys hopped up and down like a rusty pogo stick. Jeffries leaped about doing, scissor kicks cheerleader style, and Marjorie Rumpson, her beekeeper’s hat sadly the worse for her dip, grabbed up a fallen branch to wave wildly over her head. The boat cut a circle in the water and knifed toward us.

  Time for Valicia X to slip the mantle of Mangé authority around her elegant shoulders, her profile offering the stern beauty of a ship’s figurehead. “We don’t want to overwhelm the man. If you will all return to the house, I’ll talk to him alone. Unless”—she extended a wan hand to Ben—“you would stay, Mr. Haskell.”

  Surely I was woman enough to sacrifice my needs in the public interest. The Coast Guardsman threw an authoritative leg over the side of the boat.

  Ben’s daring amazed, even allowing for his being chilled to the bone. “Ms. X, might not Pepys be of more use to you? He knows—knew the cabin cruiser intimately. And I should see my wife up to the house.” A smile aimed to charm. “We don’t want the baby catching a cold.”

  “Whatever your priorities, Mr. Haskell.” The onset of sheeting rain masked the beautiful face.

  Pepys tottered around Ben. “My math ain’t great, but I make that ten points knocked off your score, Sir Gallyhad!” Bronchial with laughter, he joined Ms. X along with the Coast Guard. The Hoffmans, Miss Rumpson, and Jeffries hurried for the house, looking very much like a line of clothes being buffeted by the wind.

  Ben attempted to follow suit, but I resisted.

  “Ellie, where are you going?”

  “Only these few steps to the boat house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I keep hoping for a miracle, that’s why.” I fumbled with the door latch. “Considering her reason for taking the boat, isn’t it likely Mary would have dragged her feet? What if she came in here for bug spray or a favourite cardigan—and passed out when the explosion came?”

  “Sweetheart …” Ben nudged me ahead of him into the boxy space with its rowing boats and canoes, fishing equipment, shelves of paint and varnished smell … but no Mary.

  I dropped down on the garden seat, felt it teeter, and gripped the mock stone with my hands. “The madness of hope!”

  Gently he touched my face. “Ellie, she won’t have suffered.”

  “How do you know?” I flared. “Have you ever been blown up? Oh, I’m sorry. But her life was so wretched!”

  “What I find hard to credit”—he scrunched his hair, sending trickles of rain down his forehead—“is how any woman could so brutally kill her own daughter.”

  I stood up. “Which is your convoluted way of saying you believe Theola Faith …” The words were too awful to say.

  “Sweetheart, what else is there to think? Even Pepys and Jeffries, who have been with her for years think so.”

  “Oh, them!” Twisting my hair into a rope, I wrung it out like a towel. “They’ll want her six feet under so they can start collecting their pensions.” The steady drip drip of water on my leg was louder than the rain outside. “Even allowing for the barbecue, Theola Faith still ran the risk of bumping off extras. And wouldn’t she have to be some sort of bomb expert? Not to sound sexist, darling, but we women are usually better at blowing things up accidentally—blenders and washing machines.”

 
Ben moved to the door and back. “Sweetheart, she probably read up on it in one of those Do It Yourself manuals.”

  Or recalled how it was done in Melancholy Mansion. I could see Pepys lying on the window ledge, hear him telling me about the final scene in the film. But he hadn’t told me whether Theola Faith’s character had survived.

  “So when did she plant this explosive? Did she ride over in her speed boat while Pepys and Jeffries were setting up the picnic table?” Why was I fighting him? This was Monster Mommy we were talking about, not the Flying Nun.

  “Sweetheart, you’ll never make a murderer. You don’t have the nerve. Who knows, maybe she did the job last night on the return trip to Mud Creek or came back sometime today. The woman is an actress—a mistress of disguise. If someone claims to have seen a vagrant entering the cabin cruiser, that only helps her.”

  I almost sat back down on the garden bench, but decided I needed all the height at my disposal. Why did I feel compelled to fight for Theola Faith? Was I so provincial in my outlook that I thought it rude to suspect someone of murder after spending an evening with her? “Ben, why would she choose to do the deed here? Nowhere else in the world would she be more visible. Theola Faith grew up in Mud Creek.”

  “So she’s hoping for some kind of hometown loyalty.”

  “Perhaps,” I conceded. “I haven’t passed any shop windows displaying Monster Mommy, and the sheriff said it was banned from the bookmobile.”

  “Something else.” Ben was walking in circles that kept getting smaller until I thought he would collide with himself. “From the sound of her, Theola Faith is the classic example of small town girl who makes the big time, then looks back on the people she left behind as yokels who eat turnips with their knives, think chateaubriand is a castle in France, and count on their fingers and toes. She will be banking on the police being unable to remember the Miranda warning.”

  I didn’t answer. I could hear Theola Faith, just before we left the Lucky Strike, calling Sheriff Dougherty an “old Tom fool.” I remembered too the feeling that he was perhaps a little sweet on her. Which, under the circumstances, wasn’t to be sneezed at.

  “God bless you!” Ben said.

  “What?” I blinked.

  A tender smile. “See how American I’m becoming. People over here say that—God bless, when someone sneezes.”

  “So?”

  “So you sneezed.”

  “No, I didn’t … I thought the word.”

  “Well somebody sneezed,” Ben said reasonably. “And I don’t think it was me. We have already agreed there is no one else here …”

  “Marvelous!” I snapped. “If it isn’t bad enough that our child will be born to parents who have been mixed up in murder, now my mind is going!”

  Ben drew me to him.

  “I wish I could make you understand,” I said.

  “I do, Ellie.” He kissed my cheek. “Mary’s death is a tragedy, but that the poor unhappy girl should be murdered by her own mother is unbearable.” His face was flushed, turning his eyes a more jeweled green; they held me closer than his hands, enclosing us in a magic circle. Here, no matter what happened to the rest of the world—we were safe. Was I shallow, or a sex maniac because I realized I needed him? All I wanted was to go back to Mendenhall and our silver lurex bedroom. Aunt Astrid believes that lovemaking is for procreation and the warding off of pneumonia.

  “Think too, sweetheart, if this is indeed murder and Theola Faith is not the one, the lid is lifted on some ghastly possibilities.”

  He was right. Pushing up my sleeves, I took a layer of skin with them. Curses! The mood was ruined. The warning scrawled on the bath … the missing knives … Where—if anywhere—did they fit into the picture? No pun intended concerning the knife stuck in the Cat Cadaver. Time to return to the real world. As Ben and I walked in the rain up the rocky incline to the house, the feeling came slyly as we neared the steps, and clung with the same damp persistence as my clothes … something had been different in the boat house. Something missing.

  The elements heightened the mood macabre. Rain chattered against the windows. The wind was a third-rate opera singer practicing scales. We were gathered in the Red Room with its velvet cushioned bay, wax flowers and grand piano. Human mannequins arranged en tableau. Pepys and Jeffries at the tea trolley, the rest of us, cups poised on our laps, elbows crooked, chins lifted. Every so often someone would risk a smile, then snatch it back. Let none be cheerful nor talk above a whisper. To steal a phrase from Aunt Astrid, we were witnesses to life’s most honoured tradition: death.

  The mantel clock didn’t tick; it picked away at every second, a fingernail anxious to draw blood. Above it hung the Cat Cadaver. More sinister then ever with that gaping wound in its painted fur. Someone stifled a yawn. Someone let an impatient breath escape them. Should I raise my hand if I needed to go to the bathroom? How soon before Sheriff Tom Dougherty rescued us from ourselves? From each other? From leg cramps?

  “Who’ll get the money from her book now she’s dead?”

  Bingo had broken the curse. We were free to speak, to flex our muscles, remove our seat belts, even walk about the room if we so desired.

  “Bingo, honey! What a question!” Ernestine Hoffman did her darndest to sound cross; but per usual bubbled over with pride that her boy had asked the Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar question. Her scarlet trouser suit against the burgundy chair was enough to strike terror in the heart of any interior designer. Even a retired one, such as myself.

  Child Prodigy stopped cramming cookies into his mouth. “What am I supposed to do, cry buckets because some old lady, over forty and looks like fifty, is dead? I hate hypocrisy.” He swelled with importance. No small thanks to the cookies.

  “Now, Bingo!” Ernestine’s eyes said “Doesn’t he have a wonderful handle on life?” She feathered her Friar Tuck hair. So as to look nice for the police, I suppose. “We sure do respect your honesty—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Ellie!” Ben chided.

  He was right. Wives of Mangé candidates should be seen and not heard. I remembered myself at Bingo’s age—that time my cousin Vanessa got lost at the zoo and how I had stuffed myself with custard creams to crowd out the fear and guilt because earlier in the day I’d said I hoped the lions would eat her. Subsiding into my chair, I apologized. Bingo smirked. I doubted I would be getting a Christmas card from Ernestine.

  “We’re all feeling the strain.” Valicia X crossed the room to administer a consoling pat on Ben’s arm. He had changed into a black velvet smoking jacket. I had discovered it at a flea market and hadn’t really expected him to wear it in public. But how well it became him and this Victorian room. I had changed into dry clothes and still looked like a Before picture in a fashion make-over. Ms. X wore the same flame frock. Nary a mud splatter or a crease. She had freed her hair from its French twist so that it framed her face in waves of sun-ripened apricot.

  Small wonder Pepys scuttled his bandy legs when she asked him to pour more tea. Jeffries, bless her, was made of sterner stuff. Giving the frilled brim of her cap a twitch, she stared into space. Was she concerned for Theola Faith? Or did her affection run from pay cheque to pay cheque? Did Pepys mourn the loss of the cabin cruiser more than Mary? Would my American pantyhose provide the emotional and moral support promised on the package?

  Ms. X shone her golden smile on Marjorie Rumpson, who sat like a dear old doggie let inside after hours chained up in the rain.

  “Bless you m’dear. I’m bloody miserable.” She laid down the paperback book she had been reading—or pretending to read. The Captive Bride lay cheek to jowl with Monster Mommy on the coffee table. Face ashen, Marjorie accepted the white hanky Ben whipped from his pocket with a flourish reminiscent of the comte and Solange … and our other missing persons. “I never did think when Mary Faith popped up in that coffin downstairs and we said our first how-do-you-do’s, that she would be gone so soon, sunk to the bottom of the river.”

  “Th
ere, there!” I sat next to her and held her paw.

  “Not usually such a baby! But after almost losing Mummy, I’m not up to another blow!” She disappeared under the white hanky.

  “Honey, you’ve sure had it hard!” Ernestine’s voice was thick with sympathy. “Now don’t you go thinking I’m one to interfere, but I do worry about what the strain of competing to be a Mangé may do to you. Especially when you’re up against such tremendous competition …” Her eyes were fixed on her boy.

  “Madame”—Ben spoke with the icy hauteur conferred by black velvet and braided cuffs—“shall we agree Ms. X is the best judge of who is—or who is not—up to the business of becoming a Mangé?”

  The inimitable Valicia. A woman who could simper without looking stupid. Ernestine looked stupid with shock. “Bingo honey, did you hear this male play bunny call your mother a madam?” She rose slowly to face Ben. “Do you enjoy being called a hired hand?” Her tongue curled around the words, making them sound incredibly lascivious “… Mr. Eligibility Escort?”

  “Foul!” Marjorie Rumpson shot to her feet.

  Silence fell, like a tablecloth over a birdcage. Bingo froze with a cookie half in his mouth, Pepys tilted the teapot over my cup but nothing came out. Valicia X, far from cracking the whip of authority, stood gazing at Ben, her beautiful eyes brimming with distress. He was gazing at me, his eyes brimming with accusation. I shrank in my chair as if it were the dock. How could he think I would discuss his former career with anyone in this house? Setting his feelings aside, the day I rented him from Eligibility was sacred to my memory. One wondered what was sacrosanct to Ernestine Hoffman.

  To what lengths would she go in the name of Motherhood? She strove to remain staunchly upright, but her knees buckled and her mouth twitched. I pictured a paddlewheel going around inside her head, desperately trying to churn up some—any—excuse. She knew she had just dimmed her chances of ever being mother to a Mangé. Should I strike while her face was hot and suggest that the ghost Bingo claimed to see on our first night here may have been his very own mother, spiriting a look at the candidates’ files?