“If it isn’t grand to see you, Mrs. Haskell,” said Bridget Spike. “Would you be after having a cigarette on you to help steady me nerves?”
“She could have been killed!” Ben was still stating the obvious the next morning. A concerned frown humanised his glamour-puss image as he reclined on the bed in his black silk dressing gown, hands under his head, looking for all the world as if he were posing for a fashion layout for some ultra-glossy gentleman’s quarterly.
“Yes, dear.”
“What a miracle you showed up when you did.”
“Exactly.”
“And you say she went out for a smoke, lost her bearings, and wandered right over the cliff?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Thank God she landed on that ledge.”
“Very true.”
“One fatal slip and it would all have been over.” Ben addressed his elegantly crossed ankles while I realized I had put my slacks on back to front and my blouse was inside out.
“Poor woman!” His sigh rattled me sufficiently that I couldn’t get my zipper to go up or down. So much for all the hype about men learning to communicate with their wives. Here was one time when I didn’t want to talk a subject to death, and there was no way to shut him up short of putting a pillow over his face. Perish the thought! I had once and for all put a rein on my murderous tendencies.
When I thought “poor woman!” I thought Eudora. It had been as plain as the nose on her startled face that she thought the wrath of God had descended on her when I showed up at the vicarage door with the alarming news that her mother-in-law was clinging to life by her fingertips. We didn’t talk about the ghastly coincidence of the accident mirroring the plans we had jestingly made for Bridget at the Dark Horse. But the memory had hung over us, darker than any cloud presently in the sky, as we scuttled back to the perilous cliff with a length of clothesline to haul the long-suffering woman back to safety. Given the fog, it was impossible to get a good reading of Eudora’s face, but I knew how she must have felt when Bridget—for all her assurances that she wasn’t badly bruised—flinched when her daughter-in-law took her arm in guiding her back to the vicarage.
Eudora, being the pragmatic sort, would undoubtedly come to realize that she was in no measure responsible for the mishap. But I had been tempted several times the previous night to telephone in an attempt to comfort her with the reminder that I, with some help from Pamela, had come up with the imaginary scenario that had been coincidentally played out in real life. But on reflection, I had decided it was best to let the matter die a natural death. A fate to which Bridget Spike could once more happily aspire.
“Ellie”—Ben slid off the bed to wrap an affectionate arm around my shoulders—“I have a very special treat in store for you.”
“Really?” Looking down at the blouse I had just finished buttoning, I wondered if I had wasted my time.
“I’ve decided to take the morning off. You need my manly support after your harrowing experience. And so, my darling, I will prepare you the breakfast of a lifetime—a golden crisp potato gateau layered with savoury cream and smoked salmon. And afterwards we will take a quiet walk in the garden.” As he spoke, he led me over to the window, and we stood looking out upon a sunny scene of gently sloping lawns, colourful flower beds, and rustic benches taking their ease under the lush green shade of the trees.
“The garden is already taken.” I pointed to where Mum and Jonas had come into view over by the copper beech, with Tam and Abbey toddling along on either side of them.
“This is beginning to look awfully cozy,” said Ben.
“They make a nice couple,” I agreed. “Anyone would take them for picture-perfect grandparents enjoying a special moment with the kiddies.”
“And each other.”
“But they don’t belong together.” I resisted stamping my foot.
“You think it’s just a youthful infatuation?”
“I think we have to put a stop to it right now.”
“Do you want me to put another flea in Dad’s ear?” Ben’s voice followed me across the room to the wardrobe, where I was rummaging around for a cardigan.
“Let me do it.” I already had the bedroom door open and was halfway into the gallery. “We may get better results if I exert my feminine wiles. You’d feel self-conscious crying in the street. So why don’t you stay here and keep the home fires burning?”
“I’ll take the easy way out and go to work.” He was untying his dressing gown on the run as I blew him a kiss and made good my escape. What I hadn’t told him was that I felt a compelling need to put our house in order before my life got away from me. That my friends were in the same boat was no consolation. My heart went out to Frizzy, who now had to cope with hot-tempered Auntie Ethel in addition to Tricks, and to Eudora who—even as I was going out the front door—was probably taking down all her No Smoking signs. Pamela, admittedly, was a bit of a lame duck who could have done more to help her situation by standing up to Lady Kitty and getting a job. But having spent years bogged down by weight problems and a poor self-image, I knew too well what it was like to be caught in the trap of one’s own powerlessness.
Mum, Jonas, and the twins must have gone back into the house, as I did not see them anywhere in the garden when I crossed the courtyard on my way to the car. It was completely irresponsible of me to leave without saying good-bye to my little darlings, but I was glad to avoid revealing my destination to Mum. She had to believe that when Dad returned to her, he was not responding to any outside pressure. Ben would explain I’d had to rush out and glibly avoid going into detail.
It was impossible not to feel optimistic on such a lovely morning. The sky was as blue as my children’s eyes, and the scent of grass was worth fifty pounds an ounce as it came drifting on a soft, warm breeze through the open window of the car. Upon reaching the spot where Bridget had plummetted over the cliff, I stirred uneasily in my seat. But that was nothing to my reaction when I saw her standing by the bus stop, a quarter of a mile down the hill from the vicarage. Even though the woman had claimed to be unhurt by her near-lethal experience, I had been picturing her tucked up in a bed with plump pillows, and sheets made up with hospital corners. Surely it was too soon for her to be out unaccompanied!
Stopping the car an inch from her feet, I stuck out my head to offer her a lift and got quite a turn, as Mrs. Malloy would say. That was a suitcase in Bridget’s hand. I couldn’t have been more shocked by the sight if she had been a known terrorist.
“Sure and away, it’s kind of you to offer, but I’ll not be putting you out,” she said. “Is it not enough you’ve done for me already?”
“There won’t be another bus for half an hour,” I told her as I hopped out and stowed the case on the rear seat. “Get in and make yourself comfy.”
“It’s a grand girl you are”—she took her seat—“but I’ll not be wanting to cause trouble between you and Eudorie. She was having a bit of a lie-down when I left, and Gladstone was off to the butcher’s, so I didn’t get to say me good-byes.”
“Won’t they be upset?” My hand hesitated on the gearshift.
“Indeed they will! Last night Eudorie was on at me to stay for good and all, but it’s been pining I have for me own two rooms, where I can smoke without upsetting the apple cart.”
“You’re sure? I could run you back up to the house.”
“That you won’t!” Bridget made a grab for the door handle. “And you with troubles enough of your own. Sure enough, I left a note filled with songs of praise as would make the angels weep.”
“I can’t change your mind?”
“Not in a month of Sundays.” Her smile was stretched thin and her sunken cheeks made her nose look beakier than ever. Only a fool could fail to understand her need to hole up in her own place within easy telephone reach of her own doctor. But from the way she kept glancing uneasily over her shoulder as we drove down the hill, I sensed Bridget had some reservations about bolting while Eudora’s back
was turned.
“Will it be taking you out of your way to drop me at the bus station?” she asked when we reached the village.
“Not at all,” I assured her, and was shortly to discover I had never spoken more truly.
Parking the car outside the arena crowded with red and green double-deckers, I spotted the man I was looking for in the doorway of a flower shop on the corner across the way.
“Don’t be coming in with me.” Bridget reached into her handbag and brought out a jar of marmalade. “This here’s a wee something for your kindness, and now it’s off I am to me life of wickedness and sin.”
Over her protests I carried her suitcase into the station, right up to the little kiosk where she would purchase her ticket, and with a hug and the feeling that all wasn’t hunky-dory, I left her. Going was one thing, but taking her marmalade and heading home made me wonder if Bridget had sustained a head injury in her fall. The whole business was extremely awkward, and I was wondering, as I crossed the road, how I would explain my aiding and abetting to Eudora when next we met.
Luckily, I had other causes of concern. My father-in-law stood in front of the flower shop. He had a bunch of bananas under his arm and was calmly munching on the one in his hand. Of Mr. Savage there was no sign, but we would get to him later.
“Caught you!” I wagged an infuriated finger under Dad’s nose. The breeze lifted his white hair from his bald spot and ruffled his beard. And breezy was the word for him all right. Really, it was too much.
“Don’t let me block the doorway, Ellie,” he roared for all the road to hear, and had the satisfaction of seeing a couple of pedestrians jump out of their skins or, rather, their raincoats. For wouldn’t you know it had started to drizzle, but in a halfhearted fashion, like a child pretending to cry to get attention.
“I am not going into the shop,” I informed him rigidly.
“What’s that?” He affected a pout, most unbecoming in a man of his age. “Aren’t you going to nip in and buy a bunch of flowers?”
“Whatever for?” I stared at the tubs of tea roses and sweet Williams set out on the pavement and wondered what Jonas would say if I paid good money for a nosegay wrapped in green tissue paper when our flower beds at Merlin’s Court spilleth over.
“No need to jump down my throat.” His brown eyes shone with the innocence of Sweetie at her most guileful. “Being a sentimental old fool, I thought Magdalene had sent you down to pick out a nice little bouquet to be delivered with her apologies for behaving like a …” He pursed his bristly lips.
“Like a woman?”
“That’s the word.” Dad stepped back to let a Darby and Joan couple totter past, their faces wreathed in wrinkles, their walking sticks tapping away in perfect harmony. “All alike, you women. Crying and carrying on for no good reason. But I’ll say one thing for your mother-in-law, Ellie, she knows when it’s time to come to her senses. So she doesn’t say sorry with flowers. All the better. Would have come out of the housekeeping money and I’d be on bread and dripping for a week. What matters is she sent you down to tell me she’s made a bloody fool of herself and wants me back.”
“She did nothing of the kind.”
If he heard me, Dad gave no heed. He was in full vigour, with the world at his feet and the bounty of nature under his arm. “It’s not in my character, Ellie, to play the heavy husband. God knows you couldn’t find a milder man than myself anywhere. And it’s a sorry day when I’m turned out into the streets for taking a dip in the sea with a respectable female companion.”
“At midnight! In the buff!”
I might as well have talked to the lamppost. The bananas were ripening while we stood and I experienced a gnawing fear that the twins would be teenagers and Ben have turned my side of the bed into a national shrine before this conversation was concluded.
“Mum didn’t send me,” I said, “but I’m here to beg you to come home and make an honest woman of her.”
“She jilted me.”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“After nearly forty years!”
“Don’t you care that Mum thinks you’re up to tricks with Tricks?” Drops of rain, or possibly tears of frustration, dampened my face.
“Absurd!” Dad swelled up to twice his original size. A young woman caught in the glare of his scowl cut a wide swath around us with her thumb-sucking infant in its pushchair. “But I’ll tell you something, Ellie, if I did end up in the arms of another woman, it would be because I was pushed.”
Here it was, the time for me to use the ace up my sleeve. What was good for the gander was even better for the goose.
“I don’t want to frighten you, Dad,” I lied. “The sad truth is Mum is feeling rejected and Jonas is on the spot—a rugged outdoor man in the prime of his golden years, ready and willing to put a ring on her finger.”
“He doesn’t know the woman!”
“These things happen. And I’m growing more afraid by the minute that she will accept his proposal.”
“She must be in her second adolescence!” Dad’s face had turned red as a traffic light. Cracks appeared in the pavement at his bellow, but I stood my ground.
“She’s talking about dyeing her hair.”
“Magdalene?”
“Yesterday she wore eye shadow.”
“And you’re letting this sort of thing go on?” he roared.
“There’s not a lot I can do even if she decides to get engaged to Jonas. She’s lonely and they are both single.” I let the words sink in. “It may have slipped your memory, but Mum is a very attractive woman. And in the last few days she seems to have blossomed.”
“Magdalene has her moments,” Dad conceded gruffly. “Like when she dishes up her meat pud and two vege. Why don’t you go back home, Ellie, and tell her I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones if she’ll admit she was wrong and ask me to come back.”
“I will do nothing of the sort,” I told him angrily. “What’s needed here is for you to pocket your pride and return to her, cap in hand. Fortunately for you, this does not appear to be one of your busier days as a busker. No screaming crowds, no little tin can, no Mr. Savage.”
“Peter took the day off to stay in bed.”
“Not feeling well?”
“Sore fingers, from plucking his guitar.”
“It seems to me he might do well to rethink his chosen profession,” I said coldly, “and you had better do some serious cogitating on the perils of life as a lonely old bachelor.”
Leaving him to the dubious companionship of his bananas, I headed for my car without waiting for a policeman to see me safely across the road. I drove home in a state of blind fury. The man was as obstinate as a mule, and I had absolutely no business feeling sorry for him. It took some doing to stitch a smile on my face before entering the kitchen, but I made the effort in preparation for finding Mum crocheting away. But as it happened, the only sign of life was Mrs. Pickle. She was at the stove, standing over the kettle, which was puffing away like a steam engine.
“If it isn’t you, Mrs. Haskell!” Were there beads of perspiration on her metal curlers as she smoothed her hands over her apron in an attempt to look hard at work? “I was just giving the inside of the kettle a cleaning.”
“That’s lovely,” I said, not looking at the teacup set out with the ginger snap in its saucer. “I’d completely forgotten you were coming.”
“I don’t know as I said what days I’d be here.” Mrs. Pickle reached for a rag and applied it a slow wipe at a time to the working surface. “But never you worry, your mother-in-law told me what to do and what not to do. She went upstairs a while back with the kiddies, bless their little hearts.”
“Then I’ll go up and have a word with them.” I had just set my handbag down on the table, when Jonas poked his moustache around the hall door.
“There you be, girl!” he grumped. “You’d think the telephone would give itself heart failure the way it’s been ringing all morning.”
“I’ve been gone only an hour.”
“And that Mrs. Spike do be phoning on the minute, every minute.”
“You don’t have to tell me what that’s about!” With a quaking heart and dragging footsteps I squeezed past him and went to dial the vicarage’s number. Was I about to hear that the doctor suspected a sneaky little blood clot lurking in Bridget’s veins getting ready to race to her heart at any moment? And that by helping her do a bunk, I had signed her death certificate?
“Eudora?”
“Yes. Ellie, it’s good of you to ring me back.”
“I know you must be sick with worry.”
“Then you’ve already heard?”
“I saw your mother-in-law at the bus stop, and gave her a lift to the station. She told me she had left you and Gladstone a note, but I can understand why you are upset.”
“This isn’t about Bridget, although we’ll get back to her later. Ellie, what I’m about to tell you will come as a dreadful shock.”
“Yes?” I kept my eyes on Jonas hovering a few feet away from me.
“Lady Kitty Pomeroy died early this morning.”
“Oh, my goodness!” I had to hold on to the receiver for dear life.
“Sir Robert told me when he rang to make arrangements for the service that the cause of death would appear to be a massive stroke.”
“She went in her sleep?”
“No, Ellie! She went on her bike. She was out cycling on her way to pick up some eggs from a nearby farm. Sir Robert happened to be at the window and saw her lose control going down the steep track that provides a shortcut to the road. He said Lady Kitty went over the handlebars into the pond, and by the time he and Pamela reached her and pulled her out, she was dead.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“We have to sit down and talk,” Eudora told me. “How would it be if I came over to see you this afternoon?”
“Anytime,” I said, and put down the receiver. Bridget had not made her way back into the conversation.
“What’s wrong, girl? You look white as a sheet.” Jonas’s bushy eyebrows were way down over his nose, a sure sign that he was bothered.
How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law Page 22
