The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Oh, do please excuse me. I kept seeing a lot of white, Mrs. Haskell, and thought you were a wall. I’m so glad of the opportunity to say how honoured I am at being included in these nuptial celebrations.” Here she did a little dip at the knees, something between a curtsy and a nervous tic. Ben and I hastened to assure her of our pleasure that she could come.

  She tittered. “As a rule, I am not much of a social butterfly-I stay busy with my music, my tatting, and adding to my collection of antique telephone directories. But I was very ready to be persuaded when the vicar insisted I would be welcomed today.”

  There came a lull in the general hubbub, broken by a meowing from the staircase. I looked up, expecting to see Tobias, but it was the Paisley Lady. Skirts clutched in her hands, she came frisking down the stairs with Uncle Maurice close on her heels.

  A voice to my right chirped, “I never saw anything like it! Have to be his decadent London friends.”

  “Ellie, you were a lovely bride.” Rowland recaptured my attention.

  I felt myself blushing; I’m not used to compliments. Ben was helping Miss Thorn off with her coat.

  “It goes without saying,” Rowland continued, “that I wish both of you the best of everything. I think we have become friends and I value that.”

  “So do we, don’t we, Ben?”

  The noise level shot back up, and suddenly Rowland was hauled away by a female parishioner. Miss Thorn edged up close, her knobby hands clasped to her concave chest. “You may smile, Mrs. Haskell, but when I was a girl I used to lie awake at night and dream of being inside this house. So romantic a place! Exactly like those in Mr. Digby’s thrillers.” She peered round. “I don’t suppose he is here among us?”

  “We may never know for sure; but I doubt it. Isn’t he known to be unsociable?” My voice was drowned out by the hubbub.

  “Incredible as it may sound, I have never been here before. Unless we count the front steps. Years ago I came to ask if I might buy any old telephone directories”-Miss Thorn knotted her bony hands together-“but old Merlin Grantham threatened to drop the portcullis on me when I left. Such a colourful character, wasn’t he, like Mr. Digby or Smuggler Jim?”

  The spectacles had cleared and her eyes were nice. A warm doggy brown.

  “And then you came! So thrilling! The young heiress returning to the ancestral home”-a maiden-lady glance at Ben-“accompanied by a dark, handsome man from the big city. The village concluded you were cousins of sorts.”

  “How charitable,” said Ben. Then, like an echo of our conversation, a voice drifted up from a leopard-skin hat.

  “… Quite like a fairy tale-in every sense of the word; the best man a hairdresser.”

  Miss Thorn was saying she would take her coat upstairs, pretty herself up a bit, and then (if we wished) be delighted to play for her supper. But she became another piece of human flotsam before I could tell her the harpsichord was stuck in the boxroom.

  “Miss-Mrs. Haskell! Fancy meeting you again so soon! And Mr. Haskell!” The man with the oversized mop of black hair and jaundiced complexion, who had admitted us to the house, stalled in his tracks and affected a look of immense surprise and delight. He tucked two fingers into the pocket of his yellow waistcoat, then handed Ben a small white card.

  “Vernon Daffy, estate agent. Five hundred houses sold in the past five years. My best wishes on this auspicious occasion. Should you wish to trade up, or down, remember we’re the best in town! Feel at liberty to phone day or night. Sometime in the near future you must tour our office-we offer free coffee.” All the while he was addressing my husband and me, Mr. Daffy was looking at Miss Thorn’s head, bobbing up the stairs.

  “Thought I just heard that female say something to you about a thrill of a lifetime,” he said.

  “Her first visit to this house,” I explained.

  A burst of laughter from our rear. Mr. Daffy rubbed ginger-haired hands together. “Couldn’t for the life of me think what she could be talking about. Shouldn’t think her life is fizzing with excitement-ugly duck, isn’t she?” His eyes followed the sweep of the staircase. “A lot of charm these old places, wouldn’t lie to you on that score. But they don’t fetch what they did. Too much upkeep. Notice second bannister from bottom is loose. Now I concede that a certain amount of dilapidation may be complimentary to your antiques but…”

  Mercifully, we were borne backward by the surging masses. Mr. Daffy’s voice drifted away like a man gone overboard. “Better find the wife-name’s Shirley, but I always call her Froggy.”

  “I wouldn’t trust that man to sell me an egg timer,” said Ben. “Ancient proverb, Ellie, never trust anyone, male or female, when the hair on their hands doesn’t match the hair on their head.”

  “Imagine,” I said, “a man calling his wife Froggy!”

  I was talking to myself. Ben was gone. Attempting to follow, I was swept in the opposite direction.

  Someone bumped into me. Dorcas! She was enveloped in one of Ben’s aprons and was holding my cat Tobias, looking a bit overdressed by comparison in his white satin bow.

  “Thank God, you’re alive,” she rasped into my ear. She handed me Tobias, but taking exception to my veil, he leapt, hissing, onto her shoulder. “Where’s Ben?”

  I explained.

  “Never fear, Ellie, old chum, he’ll turn up.” Dorcas yanked at her apron straps. “Hell’s bells. Best say it and be done. I’ve bad news for you.”

  I hate sentences that begin that way. Had a notice arrived from the Archbishop of Canterbury voiding my marriage until further notice? Or-I clutched an anonymous shoulder to steady myself-had Ben’s parents been fatally injured while speeding down the motorway in a rush to be with us after all?

  “The temporary household help,” Dorcas continued, “has proved unsatisfactory.”

  “Surely not,” I shouted, “the estimable bartender described by you as Lord Peter Wimsey come to life?”

  Dorcas nodded bleakly. “His lordship sampled the gin. Found him in the pantry, face down in the lobster aspic. Sid Fowler put him to bed in one of the spare rooms.”

  This was bad. That aspic was the culmination of months of experimentation. Ben might be so anguished he would be unable to function for the rest of the day-or night.

  “It won’t be missed,” I lied. “What about the woman who came in to serve and do the washing up? Is she, by the good Lord’s grace, still on her feet?”

  “Mrs. Malloy? She’s walking around, but not in a straight line.”

  “From the general state of inebriation, I surmise our guests have been mixing their own poison.”

  Dorcas shook her head and Tobias clamped a paw on it. “Jonas took over drinks, while Mrs. M. and I began getting the food out. He fixed a punch. Equal quantities of scotch, gin, vodka, brandy, and champagne. Can’t blame the old chap! Never drinks anything stronger than Ovaltine himself. But I agree mightily, Ellie, either we get some food into these people to sop up the booze or offer overnight hospitality.”

  My heart sank. Already I was counting the minutes until I could get Ben into our hotel room. I would don my pearl-pink nightdress and he’d insist I take it off again, at once…

  “Let’s find Ben,” I said, “he’ll be putting the final touches to the buffet table.”

  “Can’t take Tobias into the drawing room.” Dorcas reached up a hand to haul him down but he leapt from her shoulder, ran along a roof of hats and was gone.

  Dorcas snorted. “Already fetched him out of there twice. That antique dealer, Delacorte, is allergic to cats. Don’t like the man. But don’t want him ill.”

  I agreed. People might think it was the food. “Better let me chase down Tobias while you put on some records.”

  “Hope you can find him in this mob.”

  “Foolish friend”-I patted her shoulder-“where food is, there too is Mr. T.”

  “… The milkman told me she had done a marvellous job restoring the place.” I smiled at the leopard-skin hat who made this kind r
emark and began making circles like someone trapped in a revolving door. I would also do a marvellous job decorating the restaurant.

  “And the butcher told me”-it was the same voice-“she inherited a bundle of money. Even so, she’ll be wise to keep busy; it’s my guess it won’t be long before she finds herself scribbling a few lines to Dear Felicity Friend.”

  I was almost afraid to enter the drawing room. Unsuppressed sigh of relief. No overturned flower vases. No pictures knocked cockeyed on the walls. Lamplight illuminated the sheen of polished walnut and ivory brocade; and, as so often happened, Abigail’s portrait above the mantel warmed me more than the ruby glow of the fire. The wedding cake rose in tiered, pristine splendour on its own table.

  I averted my eyes. I once read a story about a woman who had lived a prior life as a cat and every time she came near a mouse, her lips started twitching. Having lived my former life as a pig, icing sugar had the same effect on me. I sidled past.

  The dozen or so people in the room appeared to be comporting themselves in an orderly fashion. I even recognised a few faces. Lionel Wiseman, solicitor, stood by the buffet table conversing with two ladies.

  One of them was a woman of fiftyish. A beige sort of person. Her complexion, birds-nest hair, tweedy suit-even her eyes-all came in variations of that shade. I knew she was Mr. Wiseman’s secretary because she had been seated in his outer office, typing, on the day Ben and I went to discuss with him the legalities involved in purchasing the building we wished to convert into Abigail’s. Mr. Wiseman had introduced her to us as Lady Theodora Peerless. Did he joke? Or did some riches-to-rags tale lurk behind that monochromatic exterior? The other woman with Mr. Wiseman was a Marilyn Monroe blonde.

  His daughter? Her photograph had been featured on his desk. At the other end of the buffet table stood Charles and Ann Delacorte. Another handsome man, if you like Nordic types with fair, almost transparent, hair. He was poking his fingers through a plate of munchy morsels, searching, I heard him say, for something nonfishy. Ann was impeccably, if not fashionably, groomed. The shoulders of her emerald green dress were heavily padded which, coupled with the way her dark hair was puffed up in front and drawn sleekly back into a roll low on her neck, made her reminiscent of a model in a nineteen-forties catalogue. I wished I could discover where Tobias was hiding. (Was that a meow?) That way I could drape him in front of me and Ann might not see that the Victorian gown she’d helped me select from Delacorte’s impressive array of old-world finery was no longer in mint condition. She turned, saw me, and smiled wanly.

  “Your husband keeps bringing out more food and everything looks delicious,” Ann said, as I stole toward the table. “Usually I eat like a bird but…”

  “Very true, my dear,” responded her spouse, “like a vulture.”

  Charles Delacorte had eyes like iceberg chips. “Not that you don’t sing like a lark.” He touched her hand with his finger tips and lifted a pale eyebrow at me. “Did you not hear my wife’s voice leading the choir during your nuptials? Might you, perhaps, care to have her sing a ditty or two for the enlivenment of your guests? Something of a child prodigy, weren’t you, darling? Sang with some wildly famous people, long since forgotten-the Far Horizons and Sylvania, that toast of the night clubs! A rose that bloomed too soon, that’s my Ann.”

  Courageous Ann. Her smile never dipped, and my heart swelled with admiration and pain for her. I found myself babbling. “It would be lovely to have you sing, but with everything so noisy it wouldn’t be fair to you. You know, I think I did see that Sylvania, or rather an old film clip of her, on television recently; she was all in sequins, seated on a piano, with a cigarette in one of those long holders, belting out a ballad in this wonderfully raspy voice about some man that done got away.” A meow cut me short, reminding me of who else had done got away. Urging the Delacortes to keep having fun, I hitched up my skirts and moved on.

  A squat, muggy-faced woman touched me on the arm. It was Froggy-I mean Shirley-Daffy.

  “Such a lovely bride! I cried all the way through the service. I wonder, have you seen Squeaky?”

  “Excuse me, who?” My eyes strayed to the twitching tablecloth. Froggy let out a ribbitting laugh. “Silly me! Pet name for my husband. The old dear has to catch the London train so I wanted to remind him we mustn’t stay too late. He will leave everything to the last minute, and rushing is so very bad at his time of life. Not that the dear old sausage is old! But I can’t learn not to fuss. He’s all I have, apart from our cat. Couldn’t be without my Tibs. Yours went that way.”

  “Thanks.” A group by the bookcase alcove dispersed, and I spied Jonas administering punch from the eighteenth-century wassail bowl. He had upended his top hat on the white-clothed table, behind a placard imprinted with the words Thank You. Terrible man. I caught his eye and mouthed, “Meow?” He lifted a hand to cup his ear; unfortunately, it was the one with the ladle. I went back to prowling.

  Mrs. Roxie Malloy, the hired help, was also prowling-straightening ashtrays and tucking empty glasses into her apron pocket. Her hair was blackest black, and her face was layered with enough paint to do a small semidetached all through. Emerging from behind the sofa, she looked me up and down.

  “I trust I’m giving satisfaction, mum? Your husband took over in the kitchen. Titivating the chicken tarts he was when last I saw him. I’ve had more than my share of husbands, let me tell you, and never a word of complaint out of one of them, so I trust they’ll be no trouble with me wages.”

  She stalked off, slightly on the tilt, trailing a whiff of clove balls, Uncle Maurice’s antidote for boozy breath. Speaking of whom, there was his better half, Aunt Lulu, dozing in the Queen Anne chair by the fire. I was tiptoeing over when she moved. Or, shall we say, when her hand did. It reached out, picked up a Sevres sweet dish, chocs and all, and disappeared into the little tote bag by her side. Her snores didn’t miss a beat. If Aunty didn’t wake up soon, there wouldn’t be a knickknack left in the room.

  I wished Ben would get the buffet officially started. He was probably anguishing over some recalcitrant sprig of parsley. Rightly so, of course.

  Over by the window, Freddy was with Jill. He was doing conjuring tricks with cheese balls. And must have dropped one earlier. A slither, a scurry, and there was Tobias pawdabbing a furry ball, which desperately sought escape in the direction of Mr. Charles Delacorte. No time to delay. Scooping up Tobias, I muffled his outraged meows by swathing him in my veil.

  The grandfather clock said 4:35 P.M. as I reentered the hall. The crowd had thinned. A rumba pounded the air, and several couples were dancing. Heading out toward the centre of the floor was one of our twin suits of armor. This one was named Rufus. And would you believe it, the jolly dog was dancing-swirling and twirling, dipping and whirling in a brisk and spirited foxtrot. Old Rufus was not alone. He was clasped in the arms of Aunt Astrid. My kinswoman’s normally alabaster complexion was afire, her black hat with the spotted veiling was tilted over one eye.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, she won’t stay like this.” Hands brushed my shoulders, and I whirled toward Ben, almost dislodging Tobias.

  Having explained why I was with cat, I asked if the food was under control.

  “Does night follow day? I tipped Sid out of his chair and set him to laying out doilies. And, Ellie”-Ben’s voice changed-“promise not to count calories today.”

  “Of course, darling.” And it wasn’t a lie. I would count items instead. Losing weight is a misnomer; it always knows its way back.

  “Shall we announce that the feasting may begin?” I asked.

  “Jonas is going to come out and ring the gong. Meanwhile, you have to dispose of Tobias and something has to be done about Aunt Astrid before she compromises Rufus. Wonder where Vanessa is?”

  Once upon a time, several months ago, those words from Ben’s lips would have made my blood freeze solid in my veins. Even before he came along, my feelings for my gorgeous cousin had been ones of uncomplicated jealousy. Now I was
able to say with the confidence of a married woman, “Speak of the devil.”

  Hands in the pockets of her fox jacket, the Titian-haired lovely was descending the last stair. Men parted like the Red Sea to let her through.

  “Hello darlings.”

  Vanessa, despite her puerile existence, is one of those rare specimens who look even better close up than at a distance. My hands constricted over Tobias as she touched back a tendril of hair with a gleaming nail, unfurled her eyelashes, and tiptoed up to kiss Ben on the mouth. His return of the kiss nicely indicated his married status.

  She moistened her glistening lips and touched his sleeve. “When will the cookery book be out, darling? I can’t wait to buy it for my coffee table.”

  Super! She had her hoof in her mouth. Ben had heard nothing from Brambleweed Press, the publisher to whom he had submitted his manuscript, and he claimed to have blotted out all thoughts of its acceptance or rejection. I didn’t believe him, judging from the way he chased after the postman like a hungry terrier each morning.

  “My, my, Bentley! You are certainly haute cuisine!” Stepping back, Vanessa flicked her lashes sideways and downways at me. Tobias did nothing for my figure, there were snags in my veil and dirt rimmed the hem of my gown. Her laughter tinkled.

  Ben started to speak, but I was ahead of him. “I know, Vanessa, I do look bedraggled. But then”-I reached out and stroked the collar of her fox jacket-“I’m not wearing the sort of apparel that meows a warning when it is time to come in out of the rain.”

  “Anyone for a saucer of milk?” Ben’s voice was undisguisedly amused. Vanessa’s sherry-coloured eyes sizzled.

  Flushed with success, I beamed. “So pleased you could come, Van; it seems ages since we’ve seen you on the cover of Vogue.”

  Instinctively I stepped back. I had struck a nerve, but she did not slash out with her bright claws. After an intake of breath, her lips curved into a smile.

  “Pax, Ellie. I truly am lost in admiration when I think of how you unloaded yourself of half-a-dozen chins-just kidding!” She tweaked my cheek. “And produced gorgeous Bentley out of a hat! Do you know, until today I always thought Chitterton Fells about as exciting as a bubble bath with no bubbles, but-” She broke off. Aunt Astrid and Rufus had just collided with Rowland.