Fun wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I opened the garden door; and when I saw Pamela standing on the step beside Eudora, I wondered just what was in store.
“Come in,” I said to the accompaniment of Mum getting the twins out of their chairs and scooting them out of the room with maximum speed and tact.
“I hope we didn’t push her out.…” Eudora stepped over the threshold with a heavy tread.
“Abbey and Tam were ready to go down for their naps,” I jabbered while my mind veered off in all directions at once.
“Eudora and I met as she was leaving the vicarage.” Pamela closed the door behind them, and for a sickening second I wondered if she would turn the key and slip it into the pocket of her frock. What an imagination! The girl did nothing more menacing than endeavour to steady her trembling lips as she looked at me imploringly.
“You’ll have to excuse the muddle.” I began rearranging the twins’ booster chairs at more inviting angles and had waved at my guests to be seated before I could get a grip on myself. Blame it on my lackluster social calendar but, truth be told, I was more in the habit of sharing tips on child care with my friends than waiting for one of them to confess to activities that would mean the end of any hope of joining St. Anselm’s Hearthside Guild.
“Ellie, I have to talk to you.”
“Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone,” offered Eudora. From her haggard appearance, the vicar was in dire need of a catnap similar to the one Tobias was currently taking under the rocking chair, with Sweetie for a pillow.
“No, don’t go!” I said quickly. “I’m sure it’s best for everyone concerned that you stay.”
“Is that really what you want?” Pamela’s soft brown eyes widened as she reached out her hands tome. “Oh, Ellie”—a sob caught in her throat—“the last thing I want is to make trouble for you.”
“For me?”
“I know you were only trying to help. And I promise to visit you every month for as long as you languish in prison, but I do wish you could have kept me out of the picture.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Pamela has some bee in her bonnet that you had a hand in the death of Lady Kitty.” Eudora’s glasses took a distracted leap off her nose, and I watched in bemusement as my hand came out in slow motion to make the catch and hand them back.
“I don’t believe this!”
“I wanted to believe Mumsie Kitty died from natural causes”—Pamela’s ponytails drooped low—“but when we got her bike out of the pond it was obvious to me that someone had fiddled with the brakes.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“All of a sudden I thought about that woman who served our drinks at the Dark Horse.”
“Mrs. Malloy?”
“That’s her. I keep remembering, Ellie, how she mentioned that your mother-in-law took a spill down the stairs the night she arrived at your house.”
“Elderly people are prone to accidents.” Eudora spoke up for the defense.
“I know, but there was also that business of the potentially dangerous chocolate that found its way into the mousse.” Pamela lifted her head to look at me more in pity than in condemnation. “And the day before yesterday you said to me on the phone that you would try to help me out. Honestly, I hate myself for thinking such awful things, when you had been so kind listening to my problems and pitching in with the blackmail money.…”
“The what?” Eudora sat down in the rocking chair with a thump that sent Sweetie and Tobias scurrying for more suitable cover.
“We’ll get to that later,” I said.
“Ellie, I understand you were trying to be a friend in the true sense of the word.” Pamela kept trotting after me as I backed away. “I’d be lying if I said I was sorry Mumsie Kitty is dead, but—and this may sound awfully ungrateful—why couldn’t you have done the job yourself instead of employing that Mr. Savage as your hit man and then sticking me with the bill?”
“You have finally lost me.” I warded her off with an outstretched arm.
“Luckily my poor father-in-law wasn’t anywhere near the front door when that ghastly man showed up within a couple of hours of this morning’s main event!” Pamela was now shaking so violently, the twins’ dishes rattled on their booster chair trays. “If Bobsie Cat had been there, he would have assumed I was involved up to my neck when Mr. Savage gave me his horribly gentle smile and said in a voice that went right through me, ‘Madam, I am here to collect.’ ”
“Are you sure about all this?” Eudora spoke as if addressing a child not known for telling the truth.
“Did he say his name was Savage?” I demanded.
“He didn’t have to!” Pamela blinked back the tears from her eyes. “He looked just like one—a savage, I mean—and what he did say—and I am absolutely clear on this—was ‘Ellie Haskell sent me.’ ”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t remember.” A note of outrage had crept into her voice. “The walls started whirling around and the last thing I remember before everything went black was me screaming the place down.”
“You look ready to pass out again,” I said with a renewed sense of calm as I took her by the arm. “Why don’t the three of us go and sit down somewhere comfortable, and when you feel better we’ll try to make some sense out of all this.”
“I told several people, including my solicitor, that I was coming here.” Pamela darted an assessing glance over her shoulder at Eudora, who had followed us out into the hall and across to the drawing room. “The bus driver will remember that I asked to be set down at the stop nearest Merlin’s Court and—” She broke off to let out a squeal that almost shattered the glass in the French windows that opened onto the moat-enclosed courtyard. “Oh, my gosh! That’s him! Out there, peering in at us! Who could ever forget that murderous face or doubt for a minute that whatever his romantic feelings for you, Ellie, he will slit both our throats if we don’t pay him what we owe!”
“But surely”—Eudora stepped farther into the drawing room—“that’s none other than—”
Before she could complete her sentence, the glass door opened forcefully against the oak bookcase and, with the timing for which he was famous, in sauntered the villain of the piece.
“Pamela,” I said as she dodged behind me, “I’d like you to meet my cousin Frederick Flatts.”
“Who?” she squeaked.
“My God! It’s her!” Freddy clapped a hand to his brow. “The woman who screamed bloody murder when I showed up at her country estate collecting for the St. Anselm’s Fête.”
“And don’t think your efforts go unappreciated.” Eudora conferred a smile on him that had all the trappings of a benediction.
“I’m so sorry!” Pamela whimpered. “I guess my imagination got the better of me.”
“And no wonder,” I told her. “You were in a state of shock when Freddy showed up at the door.”
“You’re not angry with me?”
“How can I be when I was just as guilty of jumping to conclusions? Before you got here I had you tried and convicted for Lady Kitty’s murder. Now all I can say is you would need to be a better actress than I take you for in order to put on such a show.”
“Oh, Ellie, that makes me feel so much better.” Pamela sagged against me while Freddy stood looking the picture of unkempt bewilderment.
“Anyone want to fill me in on what I’m missing?” he asked the room at large. “Don’t try to break it to me gently; I have my smelling salts in my back pocket should the details be unfit for a man’s tender ears.”
“Good for you,” I said. “But this is a private matter.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“That’s right, Freddy dear.”
“How can you be so heartless!” He dabbed at a mock tear with the end of his ponytail. “I wanted to tell you how much money I collected.”
“Later.”
“And I was going to offer to take your mother-in-law
out for an afternoon jaunt.”
“Well, in that case”—it was impossible not to backtrack when Eudora was looking at him through spectacles that had misted up—“why don’t you go upstairs and have a word with Mum? But if you don’t find her in the nursery, I would leave it, Freddy. You wouldn’t want to interrupt her if she’s taking a rest in her room.”
“What a nice person,” Pamela quavered when the hall door closed on him.
“The salt of the earth,” I agreed.
“And what a pity”—Eudora crossed the Persian carpet to sit down in one of the easy chairs—“that Lady Kitty’s death makes plain we have amongst us in Chitterton Fells a person without strong moral values.”
“You don’t think you could have been mistaken about those brakes?” I asked Pamela as we took our seats side by side on one of the twin sofas.
“Not a chance.” She shook her head, causing the ponytails to slap against her cheeks. “Mumsie Kitty was riding the old bike that I had been using for ages. Trust me on this; I know how every strand of wire should be connected.”
“And I have something to tell you.” Eudora faced us squarely. “Last night, after you brought Mother back to the vicarage, Ellie, she told me and Gladstone that she had heard someone come up behind her as she blundered about, having lost her bearings. She felt whoever it was give her a push over that cliff.”
“It was foggy.” I was still clutching at straws. “People do stumble into each other under such conditions with unfortunate results.”
“That being the case”—Eudora bit her lip—“why didn’t the person respond to Mother’s cries for help instead of running off down the road?”
“And you think that’s why your mother-in-law left so abruptly this morning?” I asked. The elderly woman’s frightened face loomed up sharp and clear in my memory.
“It’s worse than that.” Eudora looked from me to Pamela. “I could tell immediately as she spoke that Mother suspected me of the attack. And who can blame her? She knew I had been upset over the fire she started in my study. She definitely thought I had gone wacky when I insisted she smoke outside. Which at my age, in Mother’s book, isn’t all that unusual. Like many of her generation, she is steeped in horror stories about women who went off their rockers during the change.”
“I don’t believe this,” Pamela said, meaning exactly the opposite. “We’re in the midst of a full-scale mother-in-law massacre!” She let out a wail that shivered the timbers of the house. “And I didn’t mean it, honestly I didn’t, about being glad Mumsie Kitty is dead. I never liked the woman, but she was Allan’s mother, and I’m not a completely unfeeling monster.”
“Of course you’re not!” I wrapped an arm around her.
“And you don’t think that Frizzy Taffer is attempting to divert suspicion from herself as she prepares to get rid of the thorn in her side?”
“No, I don’t.” I spoke with more determination than certainty. “Frizzy strikes me as a thoroughly decent woman who wouldn’t stoop to anything so low.”
“I hope you’re right, Ellie.” Eudora rubbed her shoulder as if trying to ease a deep-seated ache. “But if what we have here is an enactment of our decidedly foolish conversation at the Dark Horse, then I am afraid we may be only halfway through this nightmare.”
Pamela nodded. “Two down, two to go.”
“Bridget isn’t down, but she is out … of the picture,” I said in a desperate bid to latch on to particulars and not let go, “I know for certain that word of our silly plotting did get out, by one means or another”—this was directed at Eudora—“because I got a phone call from someone who agreed to keep mum for the price of two hundred pounds.”
“Ellie, how awful!”
“He or she didn’t put the squeeze on you?”
Eudora shook her head, and Pamela confided that she was being blackmailed for an unrelated matter.
“It wouldn’t seem to make good business sense for this person to be our murderer,” I said. “But who knows what sort of a crackpot we are dealing with?”
“All I can suggest is that someone has a grudge against one or other of the mothers-in-law and wants to cover his tracks by bumping off all four of them according to our plan”—Eudora sat up straight in her chair—“so that the blame falls squarely on the scapegoats.”
“The news media will dub us the Deadly Daughters-in-law. We set ourselves up pretty handily, didn’t we?” Pamela sat twisting one of her ponytails around her finger. “Mumsie Kitty made more enemies than she did apple pies. But I can’t think of anyone in particular, except Mr. Watkins, the window cleaner, who made quite a stink recently when she refused to pay him for a job badly done.…” Her voice faded.
“Mum had quite a run-in with him too,” I said while gathering up my courage to bring up the name that I felt sure had Pamela worried. “What about Sir Robert? I know you’re fond of him, Pamela, but you and I both heard him say yesterday, after his collapse at lunch, that he could be driven to murdering Lady Kitty.”
“I confess!” She dropped her head in her hands. “I did tell Bobsie Cat about our talk at the Dark Horse. He had a good laugh, but the old codger is all bluster. He really wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Eudora broke what became an awkward silence with the statement that, to her knowledge, Bridget had made no enemies in Chitterton Fells.
“Admittedly, she upset the bishop quite a lot with her comic-book commentary on the Bible, but that’s hardly what we are talking about, is it?”
“In addition to Mr. Watkins”—I began ticking off on my fingers—“Mum has fallen foul of both Mrs. Malloy and Mrs. Pickle—the first for giving her the sack, the second for stealing Jonas’s affections. It may not cut much ice with either of you, but I’m prepared to vouch for Mrs. M. not being the murderer. What I can believe, knowing her, is that she may well have spilled the beans about what she overheard at the pub to her friend Edna Pickle. Speaking of whom, we did have rather an unpleasant incident here earlier today.”
While listening to my stark account of the voodoo dolls, Eudora looked appropriately shocked that such things were still going on in the twentieth century, to say nothing of in her parish. But when I was finished, she said, “Unpleasant as all this is, Mrs. Pickle may have found a way to vent her feelings of pent-up hostility that falls short of murder.”
“Another thought has occurred to me.” I brushed back a lock of hair that was falling over my eyes, thus obscuring my twenty-twenty vision. “Mrs. Pickle may have a motive for getting rid of all four mothers-in-law. According to Mrs. Malloy, the lady has a burning ambition to win the Martha.”
“As does my husband.” Eudora smiled in rueful amusement. “He’s taken to sleeping in his apron and babbling recipes in his sleep.”
Pamela leaned forward. “Are we talking about the trophy awarded at the fête for the best entry among the winners in the homemaking categories?”
“The very same.”
“And you think Mrs. Pickle may have viewed the assorted talents of the mothers-in-law as a serious threat to her raging ambition?” Eudora looked at me in disbelief. “Ellie, that trophy is awarded every year. If she were to get pipped at the post this time, there would be other opportunities.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “It just sticks in my mind that Mrs. Malloy said she wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Pickle had rid herself, by one foul means or another, of former high-quality contenders.”
“But I thought those two women were the best of pals.” Pamela appeared to be fast losing track of whose side anyone was on.
“So they are, which is why I didn’t take Mrs. Malloy seriously. I thought it was just friendship talking, if you understand what I’m saying.”
“We so often talk worse about our friends than we do about our foes,” Eudora said sadly.
Deciding I had done a sufficient number on a woman who had her way to make in the world, I proceeded to close out my list of suspects on the home front.
“Mr. Peter Savage,
being a stranger to these parts, is type-cast as an unknown quantity. He’s in rebellion against his mother. And his current lifestyle does make him something of an oddity. Added to that, he did talk a lot of bosh that suggested he might have a crush on me.…” I attempted to look modest. “And if—as I fear may have happened—that unwise conversation at the Dark Horse got inadvertently immortalized on his tape recorder—which, thanks to me, was eavesdropping under the table—well, who knows?”
“And who do you suppose has sufficient reason to rid the world of Beatrix Taffer?” Eudora took a quick look at her watch.
One name unfortunately leaped to mind, but I wasn’t about to toss it into the ring. And there was luckily another possibility.
“Frizzy may have talked to her aunt Ethel about what was discussed at the Dark Horse, and believe me the woman—who may or may not have given her late husband a fatal push down the stairs—looks eminently capable of murder. Especially where Tricks is concerned.”
A heavy silence descended on the drawing room, of the sort that sometimes occurs before a particularly bad thunderstorm. The sky outside was a limpid blue and innocently devoid of cloud. But I didn’t trust the day any more than I trusted myself and the other two women to discover the identity of the person menacing the mothers-in-law, before tragedy struck yet again.
“I think we should talk to the police,” I said.
“Just what I was thinking,” agreed Eudora.
“But what if the police station closes early on a Friday?” Pamela might have been talking about a bakery shop run by two elderly maiden ladies.
“We’ll go down right away.” I got off the sofa to stand at the ready.
Eudora gave another glance at her watch. “Ellie, I can’t. Sir Robert is due at the vicarage in ten minutes to discuss the hymns for Lady Kitty’s funeral.”
“And I have to be there.” Pamela jumped up and began smoothing down her ponytails. “Would you mind awfully going down on your own, Ellie, and explaining exactly what has us all worried to death?”
How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law Page 24
