Withering Heights

by Dorothy Cannell

  “I’m sorry for snapping. Please go ahead with what you wanted to say,” I told her. We were passing the man with the sheepdog I had noticed on our arrival. I no longer cared about their romantic appearance. I hated romance. It was the root of all evil. From now on I would read only nonfiction. My favorites would be appliance manuals.

  “I expect you’re missing the children,” Mrs. Malloy answered forgivingly, “but don’t you worry. They’ll be having the time of their lives with their grandparents and that dear little dog, Sweetie, to play with. That is, if he hasn’t come down with rabies; he looked like he might be doing that the last time I saw him. But as I said to you then, very likely that breed always foams at the mouth.”

  “Say what it is you don’t want to say.”

  “It seems silly.”

  “Please!” I was tempted to bury my face in my hands, if it wouldn’t have made for irresponsible driving.

  “Well, it’s about her shoes. They was the same as mine.”

  “Whose shoes?” As if I didn’t know.

  “Val’s. Or Valeria, as Mr. H called her.”

  “It’s a lovely name. Therefore, perfect for her.” I continued driving at a steady speed; my foot did not vibrate on the pedal; I did not roll down the window, stick my head out, and shout something nasty at a passing clump of trees.

  “Yes, well…” Without looking at her, I knew Mrs. Malloy was pursing her lips and looking judicious. “I suppose there’s bound to be some as would say she’s not bad-looking, but I don’t think she’d win a prize for her legs. Which is why I feel I can say, without boasting, that them shoes didn’t look near as good on her as they do on me.”

  “I didn’t realize you had them on.” I involuntarily glanced down as she nudged a foot in my direction.

  “I changed from what I was wearing when I went upstairs. Have to put me best feet forward for Melody.”

  “Some can wear shoes and some can’t.” My eyes were again riveted on the road. But in my opinion Val’s-Valeria’s-legs were as great as the rest of her.

  We were now passing the house with the BED AND BREAKFAST sign on the gatepost, but this time there was no woman with orange hair on display.

  “According to Betty, we should turn right at the next corner and then shortly make another right in order to reach the part of the high street where Mr. Scrimshank has his office.” I hoped Mrs. Malloy would concentrate either on coming face-to-face with her sister Melody or on admiring her footwear.

  “What was it,” she said, as I knew she would, “that made you snap at me just now, Mrs. H? And you always so even-tempered.” She did know when to lay it on thick. There never was any keeping things from her when I was seized by a desperate need to pour my heart out.

  “I was afraid you’d bring up Madam LaGrange and her predictions, in particular the one about a woman having problems when her husband’s old girlfriend showed up.”

  “Oh, that!” Mrs. Malloy chuckled unconvincingly. “The way I remember it, we agreed she was spouting off nonsense. I’ve even stopped worrying about that bus-stop business. Of course,” she could not resist adding, “you could say as how the part about me traveling to foreign parts has come true, seeing as Yorkshire isn’t England as we know it down south and the people do talk with a funny accent. Not Tom and Betty and Ariel, of course, but Mrs. Cake’s speech is quite broad. But”-backtracking hastily-“that was probably just a lucky guess on Madam’s part. I don’t think you need to worry about Mr. H and… her.”

  “You don’t?”

  “ ’Course not! If there ever was something between them, it came to nothing, didn’t it.”

  “There could have been reasons.”

  “Well, let’s just say, to make you happy, that once upon a time they was all hot and bothered about each other. That’s in the past. You can’t reheat a week-old stew and make it worth eating. Besides, it goes against the laws of nature.”

  “What does?”

  “Them being physically attracted to each other. They’ve both got black hair and blue eyes-well, maybe Mr. H’s are more green. Still, it comes to the same thing. In the sort of books you and me like to read, the hero and heroine are always opposites when it comes to coloring, him usually being the one that’s dark. I should have realized that when I got the wind up about me third husband having a thing for the woman next door. They both had hair as red as fire. It was her hubby mine was after. Ran off together, they did, and they’ve been happy as larks ever since. And who can begrudge them, seeing as they were a miserable pair of buggers before?”

  “There’s sometimes a killjoy.”

  “The difference is, Mr. H is happy. He’s daft about you. Nothing’s going to change that. You and the children-and his pots and pans-are his whole world.”

  “He didn’t even see me after she walked in. At least that’s how it was at first. When he realized I wasn’t the long case clock, it was as though he shut the connecting door between us.”

  “And hung up the NO ADMITTANCE sign? Now you just stop this, Mrs. H!” Mrs. Malloy rounded on me, nearly elbowing the steering wheel out of my hands. “Working yourself up over nothing, when we should be asking ourselves why Mr. Gallagher did a bunk. Jealousy’s an ugly thing! If you let it get hold of you, it won’t let go. That was the root of the trouble between Melody and me. Always out to put a spoke in one of me wheels, she was, because I was better at leapfrog and could do the cat’s cradle without looking.”

  I felt myself relax. I had worked myself into a state over nothing. My wretched insecurities! Before setting eyes on Val I’d felt absurdly threatened by her talents in what was supposed to be my field. When would I grow up? So she was beautiful! Had I ever in all the years of our marriage feared that Ben was pining for a long-lost love? Never! Suddenly I felt like singing, but this was hardly the time. We were now in the high street, making it even more important to concentrate on my driving. There was quite a lot of traffic. This being a Saturday, pedestrians bustled along the pavement, many of them loaded down with shopping bags. Mrs. Malloy peered out her window, looking at the street numbers on the buildings.

  “There’s Barclay’s Bank,” she pointed out, “and the bus stop, a bit farther down. Remember, Betty said it’s right outside the office. Slow down, we turn here into the alleyway. She said it was a good place to park without a meter. There. Pull up alongside that car.”

  I did as I was told, turned off the engine, and stepped out. Upon seeing that Mrs. Malloy had done likewise, I locked up and put the keys in my pocket. The sun was shining as brightly as it had done earlier in the day, but as far as I was concerned it had just come out. My world was back to rights. On our return I would laugh with Ben over my silliness about Val. Or maybe I wouldn’t say anything. It was that unimportant.

  Facing us in a brick wall was a glass door inscribed with the name ARCHIBALD SCRIMSHANK and, beneath it, CHARTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT.

  “Should we just walk in?” Mrs. Malloy was tugging at her dress, fussing with her hair, shifting her handbag from one arm to the other. By way of answer I tried the doorknob.

  “It’s locked.”

  “Better ring.” Nothing like pointing out the obvious but it was my turn to boost her flagging confidence, so, telling her that was a great idea, I pressed the bell. While we waited she told me haltingly that perhaps it hadn’t been kind of her to mention Melody’s not being good at leapfrog or doing the cat’s cradle while not pointing out that she’d been unbeatable at the egg-and-spoon race.

  “Concentration, that’s what did it for her. It couldn’t be said she was a fast runner, but-”

  “Relax, Mrs. Malloy. You’re not here to be measured for your coffin.”

  “Very funny!” She was now the one to snap.

  There was no time for more; the door opened. A querulous voice bade us enter, and we stepped into a hall. It was not quite as gloomy as the hall in Cragstone House had been before the lights were turned on. Even so, its dimness required me to blink several times be
fore deciding that the person regarding us with extreme pessimism couldn’t be Melody. Not unless she wore gray pin-striped suits and had a domed bald head and a sizable Adam’s apple. Mrs. Malloy was no help, having turned into a pillar of salt.

  “Mr. Scrimshank?” I produced my best boarding-school smile.

  “Yes?” His voice was as thin and reedy as the rest of him. My eyesight having adjusted, I decided he was wise not to subject himself to strong light. A candle held too close might have caused him to crumble to dust.

  Returning to life, Mrs. Malloy edged around me to stand admiring a closed door to our left. Given the choice it was better than looking at his long poky nose. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” Her smile was better than mine, having the benefit of purple lipstick. She even achieved a modest fluttering of the eyelashes. “I’m here, if it’s all right with you, to see Melody, Mr. S.” Such familiarity! Nerves, of course. For a ghastly moment I feared she would elbow him in the ribs and announce with a coy chuckle that she’d always found accountants irresistible and was he up for an evening of Bingo?

  He looked perplexed. Understandably so, it seeming unlikely he had ever previously had his name abridged in such a way. Very likely his own mother had addressed him as Mr. Scrimshank from the time he could sit up. “There is no Melody here.”

  “Miss Tabby.”

  “Good gracious! I had no idea. Are you sure?” He appeared to be in shock. Had there been a chair handy, I would have urged him to sit down and place his head between his knees. “Such an odd name for her. I suppose she must have written it on her application for employment, but that was a great many years ago.”

  “She’s me sister.” Mrs. Malloy looked ever more robust as he faded into the paintwork.

  “I didn’t know she had one. Not that I don’t believe you. But again, it does seem odd, her having any sort of family. I’ve always thought of her as having been, one might say… manufactured.”

  The bobbing Adam’s apple was having a hypnotic effect on me. I heard him say, in a voice sufficiently recovered to sound reproving, that we had come to the wrong door, the one reserved for deliveries. In future, should we have reason to return (not sounding particularly enthusiastic about this), we should do so by way of the front entrance, which did not require ringing the bell.

  Pinching my cheeks hard in an attempt to bring myself back to sharper focus, I realized Mr. Scrimshank was leading us down the hall and around a dusky corner to a door, which he opened, before stepping back to allow Mrs. Malloy and me to precede him.

  The room we entered was the size of a pantry, made even smaller by the number of filing cabinets crowded into it. They allowed little room for the utility-styled desk, behind which a woman sat typing away with incredible staccato speed on a manual typewriter. The window was partially blocked by a blind pulled three quarters of the way down, providing only a narrow view of the street and cutting off people standing at the bus stop at the knees. One thing the room did not lack was light. It glared down from a high-wattage ceiling fixture like a baleful one-eyed god who hadn’t yet had his sacrificial virgin for breakfast. But given that Melody Tabby had not bothered to look up at this invasion of her sanctum, it was impossible to assess her appearance beyond a bent frowsy head-and the flying fingers, of which she seemed to have more than the standard ten. I stared in awe. Mrs. Malloy opened and closed her handbag. And Mr. Scrimshank exuded an eagerness to escape to his adding machines and ledgers.

  “Miss Tabby, there are two women here to see you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Scrimshank. Please send them away. They will be the pair that came a week ago last Thursday. That would be”-a glance at the desk calendar, with no diminishment of speeding fingers-“the thirtieth of June. They attempted to sell me bottles of paper ink. I told them I had no use for such stuff, having not made a typing mistake in thirty-seven years.”

  “These women come on a different matter.”

  “Even more reason, Mr. Scrimshank, to get rid of them. They will be the ones handing out religious pamphlets. Kindly tell them I already have one. It’s called the Bible.”

  “Let me have those letters by five-thirty, Miss Tabby.”

  “They will be on your desk, Mr. Scrimshank”-another sideways glance, this time at the desk clock-“by sixteen minutes to five. That will be in one half hour precisely.”

  He made what I considered an ignoble retreat.

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Melody Tabby.” Having rolled her eyes at me, Mrs. Malloy stalked toward the desk. “I could smack you for breathing, if I hadn’t needed to be the grown-up since the day you was born.”

  “So it’s you, Roxanne Malloy.” If the fingers slackened, it was imperceptible. “And who is it you’ve brought with you?”

  “Mrs. Haskell, if it wouldn’t kill you to take a look. You’ll remember, seeing as you’ve never forgotten a blooming thing in your entire life, that I’ve mentioned her in me Christmas cards. Among other things, we’re partners in the detective business.”

  An exaggeration, but I made allowances.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Haskell.”

  Her right hand may have hesitated for the barest second before zapping the carriage return. “Sorry I can’t ask you to sit down, mine being the only chair.”

  “Don’t mind that, she’ll perch on one of them filing cabinets.” Mrs. Malloy’s voice was ripe with sarcasm. “Mrs. H is related to the new people at Cragstone House. The ones that won the lottery.”

  “Thank you, Roxanne. Mr. Scrimshank had me note the day they bought the place on his calendar. I also copied it onto mine. In addition to being the former owners’ accountant, he has long been personally acquainted with them. Indeed, he provided helpful information to the police”-again that minute hesitation-“as to a phone message he received at four-thirty P.M., three days after Mr. Gallagher’s disappearance on the evening of the sixteenth of January, the year before last.” Another whap of the carriage return. “Are you and Mrs. Haskell in Yorkshire to determine his present whereabouts?”

  “I’m not saying as that’s the case, nor that it isn’t.” Mrs. Malloy looked furiously down at the bent head. “I’ve been invited to stay at Cragstone for several days, along of Mrs. H and her husband. Tomorrow afternoon there’s to be a tea party, and Mr. Scrimshank and Lady Fiona are both going to be there, along with some other people.”

  “So I am aware.”

  “I’ve been hoping to see something of you while I’m here. If the idea isn’t too hard for you to swallow, I think we should try and patch things up.”

  “And why would you want to do that?” The fingers slowed on the keyboard. I shifted back toward the door, indicating to Mrs. Malloy with silently mouthed words and sideways jerks that I’d go and wait in the hall. She responded with an adamant shake of her head.

  “Because, like it or lump it, Miss Melodymatic, we’re sisters. And”-purple taffeta bosom heaving-“forty years is too long even for you, that never forgets a blooming thing, to bear a grudge. Perhaps it wasn’t nice, me making eyes at your boyfriend, even if you didn’t want him. Which gives us at least one thing in common, because the minute he tried putting his hand up me skirt I didn’t want him neither.”

  “It was him breathing through his mouth I couldn’t abide.” Melody kept her head down but did remove her hands from the typewriter keys. I pretended to be a filing cabinet.

  “Adenoids,” heaved Mrs. M. “There never has been and never will be nothing romantic about adenoids.”

  “They say it’s not catching.” Melody finally looked up. “Not that I ever believed it. But I still tend to worry whenever I catch myself talking through my nose.”

  “Doctors don’t know everything. Outside of books, that is, when you don’t mind because they usually have a silver-gray Rolls-Royce and a thrilling foreign accent.”

  I moved to the window and watched feet lining up at the stump that comprised all I could see of the bus stop. My hands itched to raise the blind. Ben is claustrophobic
and I’ve become more so since being married to him. Perhaps that’s something else that’s catching, despite medical views to the contrary.

  “Books!” Melody repeated. “I haven’t read a novel since putting down Jane Eyre for the last time.”

  “So that’s it!” From the corners of my eyes I beheld Mrs. Malloy doing a tiger stalk in front of the desk. “I thought as you was looking downright peaky. Frightened me, it did. That’s why I wanted Mrs. H to stay, on the off chance I should pass out and need her to catch me as I fell. But now I know all that’s needed to buck you up is for me to take you down to reapply for your library card, I feel better. Me heart’s not hammering so bad. Maybe I won’t need to take one of me tablets.”

  What tablets? They were news to me. I looked from one sister to the other. Despite Melody’s washed-out coloring, there was a strong resemblance between them, not only in body build and facial features but also in the set of the jaw and the tilt of the head.

  “You’ve got heart trouble, Roxanne?”

  Mrs. Malloy avoided an outright lie. “Wonky tickers run in our family, Melody.”

  “Mine’s all right.”

  “Yes, but then you’re younger than me. Always have been and always will be.” The nobility of this admission almost brought me to tears. But then she lapsed. “ ’Course, people do say as I don’t look a day over forty. Still”-her halo, or it could have been her royal crown, reemerged-“I can’t claim to look a slip of a girl the way you do, Melody.”

  “Really?” Another of those sideways glances, but this time not at the desk calendar. Did Melody hope to see a mirror magically appear on the wall?

  “I like that new way you’re doing your hair.”

  “You do?” Fingers poked at the shapeless frizz.

  “And your figure! You’ve lost your puppy fat. Must be from keeping yourself so active at the typewriter. I’ve never seen the like of the way you go! How many words can you do a minute?”