The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

  He leaned backward so that I had to look at him. “Hell was feeling the hall floor disintegrate under my feet. I was livid with you. I planned to murder you the minute I got out, but when I read that green notebook and realised that someone else was in all likelihood making the same plans, I didn’t have time for claustrophobia.”

  I touched his face, so handsome, so concerned. “It was the same for me, in a way. When I became caught up in worrying about you, I stopped being frightened of food; I didn’t have time to concentrate on not eating.”

  His arms entwined about me. “Ellie, don’t be afraid now. We’re going to the police; this monster-The Founder-will be stopped.” His lips brushed my throat. “We’ve made a lot of mistakes, but what can we expect, we are only beginners. I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand you completely. I don’t need to understand you to love you. All that matters is that I would have crawled through the centre of the earth to get to you and that I wasn’t too late.”

  The moment was so fragile that I was afraid to say anything of what I felt, in case it broke. I cleared my throat and asked if Poppa was all right.

  “Yes and no. Physically he’s fine, but he’s worried about how Mum’s feeling and consumed by guilt because in the shock of being plunged into the dungeon he accidentally spoke to me.”

  “What made you look for me here?” I asked as Ben helped me to my feet.

  “When we were racing up to the gates of Merlin’s Court, Poppa and I saw Miss Primrose Tramwell; she was in a flap about everyone being missing.” He touched his fingers to my lips. “It’s all right, darling. Everyone is found. Poppa is with them. I didn’t know where to look for you until we saw Sweetie coming along Cliff Road, and I clutched at the possibility you might have gone looking for her in the churchyard. When I turned that way, she ran back ahead of me and eventually in here to the cake.”

  I shivered, as much at owing Sweetie a lifetime of gratitude as the memory of what I had been through. She had probably only come in here to ‘go’; so Roxie would claim anyway; but I would buy Sweetie a lifetime subscription to How to Train Your Owner. My mind began to whirl with questions. Had Ben and Poppa seen Edwin Digby when they exited in his cellar? What had befallen my comrades-in-arms? And… where was The Founder now?

  Ben guided me to the door. “You have to get some fresh air, darling.”

  As we stepped onto the grass, my legs went pulpy, and the noonday sky seemed to tilt. The Founder could be behind any one of a hundred tombstones. I gripped Ben’s hand tighter.

  Mr. Digby was standing on the sun-dappled path, a gun in his hand, and my surprise was that I was surprised. Everything had pointed to him, but in his drunkenness he may have thought himself invincible. Mother was waddling around him in narrowing circles. I felt sorry for the goose. Mr. Digby’s purplish fingers were pointing the gun, not at Ben and me, but at someone standing in front of an angel monument.

  “Mrs. Haskell.” His head moved an inch in my direction. “My abject apologies on behalf of my daughter Wren.”

  Ben and I turned in slow motion.

  “No!” I exclaimed. “She can’t be, she isn’t… this is Jenny! Jenny Spender.” I had suspected Bunty might be his daughter; she was the right age and admitted she used a nickname. Digby had said Wren was living with a man; gossip said Bunty and Lionel weren’t really married. But, Jenny! Ridiculous! On second thought, maybe not…

  Her eyes, those eyes which I had always thought too old for a child’s face, drifted over me and fixed with the most chilling hatred on Mr. Digby’s face.

  “Jenny Wren.” Ben stroked my hair back from my face. “Hyacinth Tramwell recorded all the clues in her little green book. That farthing, as well as the photograph in the pocket of the pin-striped suit you borrowed from Mr. Digby, suggested to yours truly that Jenny was the one. The farthing was the smallest coin in the realm and carried the symbol, on one of its sides, of the smallest British bird, the wren.”

  “She was such a tiny baby,” Mr. Digby mused, “and she had given me that farthing in the happy days for a good-luck charm. It was easier to believe I had gone mad than to think of her grown evil. These past five years I have cowered in the bottle. But when you, Mr. Haskell, with parent in tow, burst into my house ranting about a widows club, I knew I had to pull the stopper, on myself, on my child.” The gun wavered but he steadied it with his free hand.

  Ben stared into the wedge-shaped face framed by the childish plaits. “The Founder had to be someone who could observe and listen unnoticed. A hairdresser? A solicitor? A secretary? A charwoman? All good possibilities, but what better cover than that of a child?”

  Jenny smiled, her fingers gripping the angel’s marble wings as if she would snap them.

  “You were at Abigail’s the night of Charles Delacorte’s death,” Ben continued, addressing her, “carrying a white plastic raincoat. How convenient! I suppose you walked into the office, smothered him, and wore the murder weapon off the premises.” He paused. “Did you inherit your stage presence from your mother, along with your father’s macabre imagination? Was she eternally youthful, like you?”

  “I can’t sing like Mummy,” said Jenny in that dreadful childish voice, “but I do have her ear, as well as her great sense of timing.” Her laughter went right through me. “I was able to phone all the ladies in the aerobics class-pretending to be Bunty Wiseman-and I cancelled the rehearsal. Then I rang her up, claiming to be Miss Thorn, saying the church hall wasn’t available. A clever ploy, wasn’t it, Mrs. Haskell,” she twiddled with a plait, “to get us alone?”

  Ben continued remorselessly, his hand tightening around mine. “Ann Delacorte recognised your mother as Sylvania, the singer on whom she had an almost schoolgirl crush, when she went to the Dower House that day with Ellie. That idea sneaked up on me when I read that the nanny called your mother Vania. And I’ll wager the record being played was one of hers, from her heyday. The excitement caused Ann to turn faint-two thrills in one day, Lionel Wiseman and now the discovery of her idol.” Ben shook his head. “Foolish Ann. She made a big mistake. She thought The Founder was pretending to be an invalid, not a child. And she was gripped by the sort of groupie closeness that gave her the confidence to go and ask a favour. That green car that slashed past you, Ellie, when you made your pregnant visit to The Peerless, I wonder if it was Ann’s Morris Minor?”

  “I really enjoyed killing her.” Jenny’s voice wasn’t a child’s anymore. It seemed especially evil that she should make such a pronouncement in this little place of consecrated ground. “I became quite expert at archery when Daddy here was doing research for his book, Robin of Nottinghill Gate. Simon tried to talk me out of retiring Mrs. Delacorte. He said it might stir up a panic among the widows, but Simon always comes around to my way of thinking. That’s what love does-it turns people into fools. I rather enjoy watching the good doctor squirm for me the way my mother used to squirm for Daddy.”

  “Not true, Wren,” said Edwin Digby.

  “Yes, she did. She, the sparkling, glittering Sylvania, who had men reaching for her every time she stepped on stage and lit it up with her voice. She was ageless and she loved you, God only knows why, you ugly man, only to discover that you were trying to relive some adolescent passion with your secretary, the washed up, washed out Lady Peerless.” Jenny took on Teddy’s toothiness. “And because of you and your unfaithfulness, my mother, my exquisite mother, stuck her head in the oven and wasn’t lucky enough to die. She became a husk. I can look in her eyes and call, but she isn’t there.”

  Edwin Digby took a step toward his daughter and then retreated, the gun dangling in his hand. “Wrong, Wren! Your mother never really loved me. Her one passion was her career; she would never acknowledge she was married, even after you were born. She was obsessed with keeping up the aura of being unattainable. She insisted that I use the pseudonym Edwin Digby-in private life, to tighten the veil of secrecy, and you were kept hidden away with her childhood nanny.”

  He was a figure out
of a vampire skit, with his twirled eyebrows and beard forked by the wind. “Teddy and I had been youthful sweethearts, but Sylvania demanded that I sever all ties with the past. Think what you will of me, all of you!” His eyes glared at Ben and me as well as his daughter. “Teddy is guiltless!” The words might sound as if they came from one of his books, but I felt drops of water on my face, that weren’t rain. “She did not realise she would be working for me when she applied for the post of my secretary, ten long years ago. She had known me under my real name of Robert Burns, which-” his rheumy eyes were turned fully on Ben and me now, “I never used professionally, for obvious reasons.”

  “And you fell in love.” Jenny (she would always be that to me) made the words sound like gutter ones.

  “I swear there was no unfaithfulness. What drove your mother mad”-Mr. Digby’s lips twisted-“was the idea of so unworthy a rival.”

  Jenny smiled mockingly. “You did not think it unfaithful to ask Mumma for a divorce.”

  I said, to be saying something, “The parrot in Teddy’s office talks like one of your characters, Mr. Digby.”

  “A farewell present, Mrs. Haskell. Teddy was ever a bird fancier. I settled in Chitterton Fells to be near her, even though we had assured each other that all was over between us. I came to the Haskell wedding reception,” the wind lifted his crinkly hair from his high forehead, “but too late, too drunk, to catch a glimpse. The first time I saw Teddy in all the years, other than to pass on the street, was at the restaurant soiree, the night Charles Delacorte died.”

  “Teddy saw your daughter there.” I wrenched my eyes away from Jenny’s smile. “Maybe she wasn’t sure at first, but then the full horror must have hit her-that this was Wren,” I inched closer to Ben, “grown frighteningly younger than when last seen. No wonder Teddy blundered into the office to escape and, instead, found a body. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about that night. I don’t suppose she suspected-do you Mr. Digby?-that Wren had anything to do with Charles’s death, but I don’t doubt she blamed herself, all over again, for the old tragedy and… the results to Mother and now…”

  Jenny was still smiling. “I’m not mad and I do not consider myself a criminal.”

  Mr. Digby steadied the gun again. Mother trod over his feet, as he said, “I have not seen Teddy since that night.”

  “I imagine,” Ben said to Wren, “that it was your father’s latest pseudonym, that of Felicity Friend, that embarked you on your voyage of revenge?”

  “It wasn’t only revenge.” Jenny’s voice was wistful, a child’s again. “I wanted to help other women whose husbands were betraying them. And when Daddy became Felicity Friend and I remembered that book, The Merry Widows-that sold three copies, it all became clear. I had expert medical advice from Simon, who yearned to suffer at my hands. I could kill off Daddy a little bit at a time with every other man whose death I staged and bide my time until I decided to bury him.” Her eyes were on Mother, who was standing motionless with her wings spread. “You didn’t like to refuse me, did you, Daddy, when I asked you to put the occasional message in your confidential column? I told you it was a little game I was playing. But you worried nicely about what it all meant-the dickybird brooches… the deaths, but Daddy’s little girl was too big to go in the corner. And what you didn’t see couldn’t happen. What a weakling you are! Not even man enough to fight for your Teddy bear. I wish I could think she had read The Merry Widows and suffered accordingly, but even if she had-which isn’t likely-I don’t think her capable of taking the leap from fiction to fact. And such was your downfall, Daddy. You were ever so grateful (weren’t you?) that I was looking after Mumma, and came to see you sometimes.”

  Jenny gave a childish giggle and addressed me. “I was at The Aviary the day you came, and he got the wind up, first that I might do something to tease you, and then that your charwoman had recognised him as Felicity Friend. I was so tempted to cheer him up by telling him I would kill her for him.”

  I drew closer to Ben. The rustling of the trees and Mother’s feathers were for a moment the only sounds. “I should have guessed, with so much typing on his desk, when supposedly he hadn’t written in years, that Mr. Digby was a prime candidate for the role of Dear Felicity. And I should have realised that the only reason to wear plaits that make you look too young for your age is because you are too old for them. I suppose that makes me rather stupid, but I really prefer that to being diabolically clever.”

  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Jenny stepped away from the angel. “And to think I thought you so guileless. I liked you. I really did. You gave me your wedding roses and I sent you some. But you figured out the way to trap me. Only it isn’t going to work.” She lifted up her arms and spread her fingers, as though pushing back the clouds. “It can’t work because my dear Daddy wouldn’t shoot me. He doesn’t have the courage.”

  She stepped toward us. “I have nothing to lose, you see, because I have nothing to love. Mumma was gone a long time ago.”

  She kept coming. She was right. Edwin Digby couldn’t pull the trigger. Closer, closer. Mother must have felt threatened, for suddenly her wings fanned out. Neck extended, she rushed toward Jenny, who turned her back and with an eerie, childish laugh, darted and zigzagged between the tombstones, arms outstretched. Maybe she didn’t look ahead, maybe she did. It doesn’t alter anything. She tripped and tumbled headlong into an open grave-the grave waiting for Ann Delacorte. And we were left standing in the wind-ruffled churchyard, listening to the gulls and the distant moan of the sea.

  Epilogue

  Primrose expressed my sentiments exactly. “I can have no sympathy for The Founder; but I am saddened that Jenny got lost somewhere in childhood, a place many of us like to revisit but do not want to relive, and that she is dead. Let us thank God her end was quick and trust that Mr. Digby is successful in persuading that friend of his at Scotland Yard that The Widows Club does exist. Although my strong feeling is that with its guiding force gone, the organisation may degenerate into a social group.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Hyacinth’s earrings swung. “And now, my dear Prim, I think we should leave the charm of Merlin’s Court for the charms of home and writing our report to our insurance company employer. Not, Ellie, that things haven’t been entirely delightful here this afternoon with the constabulary buzzing in and out.”

  Actually I felt rather sorry for the police. They must have wondered whether they were coming or going. Mr. Digby and Ben had remained to keep vigil over Jenny’s body while I raced home to report the accident, only to find uniformed lawmen spilling all over the ground floor of Merlin’s Court.

  Poppa and Magdalene occupied chairs of honour as they gave statements concerning the Raincoat Man (yes, our other villain had staged another kidnapping attempt). Hyacinth, Primrose, and Butler hovered in the background, supplying the occasional salient point. And lounging against a wall with a self-deprecating smile on his lips, was the hero of the hour, my cousin Freddy.

  To return to the disappearance of Magdalene, Hyacinth, and Butler, it will be remembered that they had gone in pursuit of Sweetie and each other. And there they were, milling around the grounds near the gates, when Reggie, the Raincoat Man, slithered out of nowhere, yelling “Hands up!” He was in the midst of complaining that he kept kidnapping more people than he really wanted when Freddy stepped, unnoticed, out of the cottage.

  My cousin had been harboring nasty suspicions about the Tramwells and Butler. He was certain they had Ben tied up and gagged and were keeping me and Magdalene hostage while they holed up at Merlin’s Court until their boat arrived to take them to France… or something along those lines. He had been rattling his brain trying to think of some way to conduct a rescue without getting hurt himself when there he went walking smack into the bunch of them. Reggie’s remarks suggested to him, as did the gun, that here was the leader of the gang. Feeling chuffed that his theory was right on, our hero stood for a minute, unseen, at the back of the group and was
on the brink of fleeing the scene-to fetch help, as he tells it-when he remembered the chains he wore. Slipping one off, he tossed it around Reggie’s neck, yanked until he could hear the villain’s veins pop, then suggested that the gun be dropped.

  Everyone (except Reggie) was ecstatic. But Freddy, unwilling to have the excitement peter out, voiced doubts that the Tramwells and Butler were innocent. Figuring Magdalene might be vouching for them under duress, he marched all of them, along with Reggie, into the cottage to telephone the police, which is why I couldn’t find them when I went looking for my missing persons. Magdalene had just persuaded Freddy that Reggie was the only counterfeit in the group when she saw, through the window, Ben and Poppa running down Cliff Road, almost mowing down Primrose, who was searching for Sweetie near the gates.

  Magdalene came out the cottage door. Explanations followed. The police arrived, Reggie was removed in handcuffs, and the decision was made to adjourn to the main house. Freddy didn’t have any tea and the ladies expressed a dire need for its reviving qualities. Shortly thereafter I arrived with my news that Mr. Digby’s daughter had fallen in an open grave, Ben had climbed in after her, and we were sure she was dead.

  “An afternoon to remember, Ellie, old girl.” Freddy crossed his legs at the ankle and inserted his hands in his pockets, studying his sockless feet.

  “Yes,” I said, “and you were marvellous. I’m sure I looked very ingenuous and wide-eyed. If my lids as much as flickered-I saw Jenny.” A chorus of agreement arose from everyone. Ben was showing the last policeman off the premises.

  “Don’t say it,” Freddy rejoined. “Don’t say that line about everything I have is yours because, despite the vulgar tattle, I really don’t want Ben. Sorry, darling”-he tossed back his hair-“I just don’t think he is that cute. And this being the eighteenth of May-namely, my birthday-the date Jill and I assigned for renewed communication, I am off to see if she has come to her senses. It’s begun to dawn on me, after watching your marriage close up, Ellie, that life doesn’t have to turn into an old potato after tying the knot.” He spread his hands. “There can still be the thrill of living on the edge.”