The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Say, lady!” One beleaguered fellow mopped his brow with a damp handkerchief. “Don’t yer ’ubby ’ave no place of work to visit?”

  “No,” I said, ignoring the little misunderstanding about our relationship. “He doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up.”

  Unless we were prepared for a full-scale strike it seemed expedient that as many inhabitants as possible should clear out of the house each day. Naturally the thorn refused to budge, but Dorcas was always happy to don her felt hat and take her thermos of tea out to the walled herb garden, which she had made her special province. One morning I remembered my idea of checking the parish register for the date of Abigail’s death. Walking through the hushed, silent churchyard bothered me, but I found the current register open on a lectern by the font, at the back of the church. The older volumes were stacked neatly underneath on a shelf. Within minutes I had found the recording of Uncle Arthur’s death. Merlin must have been about twenty when his dead papa passed on to his just reward. I hope he liked warm weather, but I found no reference to his wife.

  Musing, I left the church and drove down into the village. The tall, dapper gentleman behind the varnished counter at Pullett’s Jewellers was deference itself; but he regretfully informed me that the firm’s records dating back fifty years and more had been destroyed in a fire sometime back. So much for Abigail’s garnet ring. Perhaps I had overreacted to her entry of its sale, but I still felt convinced that, if not the treasure, it was part of the puzzle. Her every-day life, revealed through the journals, continued to obsess me during the following weeks almost as much as my restoration of the house. Her house.

  Shopping for other people’s domiciles had always given me great pleasure, but buying for Merlin’s Court was a joy. Often Dorcas would accompany me, and we would lunch in whatever picturesque inn caught our fancy. Eating sensibly was now becoming almost a habit and I was getting plenty of exercise sauntering through arcades and marketplaces, searching for the right objects to ornament the house in its renewal. The drawing room mantelpiece was causing me some problems. I did not want it to look top-heavy or overly fussy. What I needed were one or two fine pieces to accentuate the mood and colours of the room. One afternoon, ambling along in our usual stop-and-start fashion, we came upon a place called the China Cabinet, sandwiched between a row of mellow brick bow-fronted shops. Dorcas was the one who pointed. “That’s it! The yellow Chinese vase with the peacock-blue leaf design. Put that on your mantelpiece with a pair of brass candlesticks and you’ll be all set.” As soon as I saw it, I knew she was right. Dorcas had shown another of her rare flashes of artistic brilliance.

  All this was great fun, and the house, having been stripped bare, was coming to life again like a tree after a lone hard winter. The two worthy ladies from the Labour Exchange finished up their days with us by scrubbing every window with vinegar and newspaper until they winked like a hundred sparkling eyes. On the day they picked up their last payment and left, there was so little for me to do that I remembered my intention of talking with the vicar. I should have visited Mr. Foxworth sooner to request his help, but I had begun to feel that a continued search for clues was a waste. Time was a runaway horse. Despite his daily stints at the typewriter, I knew Ben seriously doubted his ability to finish the book. Still no word from Jill, but he had gone off the idea of hypnosis anyway. He didn’t have what it took to be a writer, Ben told me morosely. The spirit was willing but the prose was weak, as Jonas had kindly pointed out to him, adding that Thomas Hardy, Dickens, or any of the other greats could have polished off a rewrite of that blasted book during one of their tea breaks. Let’s keep the enemy happy, said Ben. Forget about the inheritance, buried treasure, fifth-rate novels, and even diets.

  But I did not want to forget about my diet. I had become quite fond of the tyrant; it was being nice to me. And I did not want to forget about Abigail, if for no other reason than I felt she would have been, was, my friend. Whatever else was or was not accomplished, I had to discover why and how she had died.

  To ensure that the vicar did not write me off as just another crackpot who wanted to trace her family tree back to William the Conqueror, I took time over my toilette. Looking cool wasn’t easy; we were in the midst of the summer’s first heat wave. My hair was already clinging damply to my neck, so I lifted it into a thick twist which I pinned on top of my head before slipping into something from last summer’s collection—a coffee-coloured smock. Something was very wrong. Instead of billowing out in a happy, frolicsome mushroom, the folds of the dress hung limp. The shoulders sagged and the neckline gaped. Nervously I placed a hand where my stomach usually was and inched towards the mirror. I was peering into it, my neck twisted, when Dorcas knocked and came in asking if I wanted thyme or parsley in the outer border.

  “Both,” I replied vaguely, lifting my eyebrows and sucking in my cheeks.

  “Impossible. Foul up the whole system. Anything amiss? You seem distracted.” Dorcas jolted down on the bed. “Ellie, are you looking for something?”

  “Yes. I’ve just this minute noticed I’m missing one and a half chins and my cheeks aren’t right either. They no longer have their friendly hamster bulge.”

  Dorcas nodded. “Realized for some time, but thought it best to say nothing. Afraid comment on the subject might throw you off your stroke. What do the scales say, or haven’t you asked them? Aha!” She correctly read my reflection in the mirror. “Afraid of disappointment. Always better to know the truth, however unpalatable and, when the news is good, marvellous boost to the morale, keeps up the momentum.”

  Taking me by the elbow, Dorcas marched me forthwith into the bathroom and ordered me to climb on the scale. “No time for false modesty,” she assured me, “all girls together.” The needle swung into a curve, flickered, and stabilized. Awed, I looked down at the dial: over two stone. When did it all go?

  “Congratulations!” Dorcas vigourously pumped my hand. “Now if only Ben can find inspiration and we can turn up another of Uncle Merlin’s clues we will be all set.”

  Walking out into the courtyard, we discussed the ones already in our possession and I mentioned the thought that had been nudging at the back of my brain for a while. Uncle Merlin’s instructions had been that we find the treasure connected with the house. He had not said in the house. This implied that the treasure might not be hidden within the structure itself but in the grounds or even farther afield.

  We were now standing in the little walled herb garden. The sun beat down on our bare arms and the air was rich with the smell of newly turned earth and the fragrance of mint, hardy enough to have survived years of neglect. Dorcas loved this place; so must have Abigail. Many of her recipes depended on the sweet sun-savoured herbs she had nurtured here. Had this garden also been an island of escape from the tedious company of a critical husband, a place that was peculiarly her own? Bending, I picked up a handful of soil and rubbed it through my fingers. If Abigail had wanted to hide anything this would have been an ideal place. But again I might be assuming too much. In Abigail’s day an herb garden usually fell to the sole province of the lady of the house and since then it had lain in total neglect. No one had plucked a sprig of mint here for years, until Dorcas came along wielding her gardening fork. As so often happened, she understood what I was thinking.

  “Been wondering if this is the place, have you? Logical! Should have thought of it sooner. You go ahead and pay your call on the vicar. See what you can discover about Abigail, and I will proceed here; unless you feel it inappropriate for me to conduct the dig unattended—your treasure and all that. Appreciate your allowing me to participate, but you should be less trusting, Ellie—can’t always judge a book by its cover—worked for a woman once, taught English Lit. Nicest person one could wish to meet, but feather-fingered—embezzled the Sports Day prize money.”

  Assuring her that I had no doubts of her integrity, I left Dorcas plunging her fork into the earth with workmanlike precision, and went off to visit the vic
ar. I found Rowland Foxworth in his study working on his Sunday sermon. I was ushered into this sanctum by Mrs. Wood, his housekeeper—a sparrow of a woman who muttered, pushing open the study door, “If folks was meant to arrive unannounced the good Lord wouldn’t have bothered inventing the telephone.”

  Thoroughly snubbed, I was apologizing to the vicar before he was halfway out of his chair. “I should have rung before coming over, but I didn’t know the number off-hand and …”

  “Please.” He clasped both my hands warmly in his and beamed approval. “I am delighted to see you.” The room gave evidence of the glum Mrs. Wood’s belief in the power of elbow grease, but the signs of Mr. Foxworth’s relaxed, tweedy personality were evident in the open book on the coffee table and the worn pipe spilling ash on the desk. Brushing his silvering hair back from his brow with a rather endearing, abstracted gesture, Mr. Foxworth drew forward a leather chair for me and sat down opposite. “Ellie, what can I do for you? I have called several times and found you out, but even so you must think me very remiss in not seeing more of a new parishioner.”

  “And you must think me very remiss in not attending services.” I looked into his kind grey eyes. “I am ashamed to admit it, but I have an uneasy feeling, not about the church itself really … but the graveyard. I didn’t relish coming through it today, especially when I had to pass the family vault. Give me time and I will overcome the feeling.”

  “I appreciate the effort you made in coming to see me.” He smiled, reaching for his pipe. “It would be good to see the old Grantham pew occupied. Miss Sybil Grantham does occasionally attend evensong, but as you know, your uncle viewed every clergyman as a bombastic hypocrite and refused to darken the doors of St. Anselm’s.”

  “At least he agreed to a Christian burial, but I think that may have been to ensure he was not hustled out of this world without due pomp and pageantry.” This topic was right where I wanted it.

  The vicar smiled. “He certainly went out in style; I gather the horse and carriage was a sentimental gesture in remembrance of his mother. An unusual man, a pity he was such a confirmed hermit. When I was assigned this living three years ago I did call, but Miss Grantham was ordered not to let me over the threshold. Now tell me, can I help you in any way? Or may I hope this is a social visit?”

  Nice man! I wasn’t sure, being such a novice, but I thought I detected a decidedly unclerical gleam in his eyes. Ben might not want me, but he was not the only twig on the tree. Wickedly, I was tempted to test the strength of Mr. Foxworth’s virtue by doing an impromptu impersonation of Vanessa at her sexy, alluring best. But my diet had taught me restraint and I still possessed the naïve notion that nice things happen only to girls who wait.

  At that moment Mrs. Wood entered the study, and grimly deposited a tray of tea things on the table between me and the vicar and left us with an affirmative slam of the door. While I poured, I told Rowland, as he insisted on being called, about Uncle Merlin’s will and the treasure. He looked immensely interested.

  “You may possibly have already considered the idea, but I would think that carriage might provide an excellent hiding place for something of value, under the seat or floor.”

  I told him that I had searched the Victorian conveyance to no avail before lending it, with Mr. Bragg’s approval, to the local historical society. It had been taking up rather a lot of space in the stable. “We have no horses. The ones used for the funeral were borrowed. But I do agree that Uncle Merlin’s funeral arrangements are important because they were our first indication that the treasure was connected with Abigail Grantham, and in particular her death. Which is where I hope you may be able to help. I know I am delving back a very long way, but did the previous vicar say anything about her? Anything vaguely hush-hush or mysterious? Anything to suggest suicide?”

  “No.” He took a long thoughtful puff on his pipe. “But I do remember overhearing a discussion once among some of the older women at the Mothers’ Union, something to the effect that Mr. Merlin Grantham’s mother had died under peculiar circumstances. Or am I being accurate? I think the statement was that no one quite knew how she had died. Not quite the same thing, is it?”

  “No.” I set my cup down and reached to refill it from the pot. “And the rumours concerning Abigail would be fuelled by Merlin’s eccentric behaviour. Her former maid, an old woman called Rose, was the one who told me about the local suspicion that Abigail killed herself.”

  “What do you think?”

  “That she was murdered by her husband, Arthur Grantham.” There—I had said it at last; but the suspicion, voiced in the vicar’s study with its air of rumpled comfort and quiet occupation, sounded melodramatic, almost sacrilegious. What right had I to cast aspersions upon a man long dead, who had doubtless been respected in this neighbourhood and a pillar of his church? The villagers whispered about his wife—not him. How could a man who parted his hair in the middle, waxed and twirled his moustache, and probably undressed in the wardrobe, be anything worse than a ponderous bore?

  Rowland proved to have one rather serious fault. He was a realist; he wanted to know on what basis I suspected Arthur. “Why do you think he killed her?”

  “Because if suicide is out, what other reason would there be for people whispering about her death sixty-odd years after the event? An event which, by the way, is not recoraed in the parish register. Add to those facts another. Aunt Sybil, who visited the house regularly as a child when Abigail was alive and was present at the funeral, knows nothing other than that Abigail went very suddenly. I can’t think of anything more sudden than murder.”

  “In those days there were a lot of twenty-four-hour killers, blood poisoning, bee stings, append—”

  “Then why the mystery? Those aren’t social diseases to be shoved under the rug. No, believe me, the most likely explanation is that hubby did her in. Oh, I admit he appears to have been a model of respectability, but those types are often the worst. The man was an exacting prig—demanding, carping—perhaps breakfast was late two days in a row, or maybe Abigail cooked a batch of jam that didn’t jell. Who knows? Arthur’s only problem would be convincing me doctor that Mrs. Grantham had fainted dead away and never come round.”

  Rowland looked interested but not convinced so I pressed on. “Okay, doubting Thomas”—a biblical reference seemed polite when talking to a clergyman—“explain this: Why is there no record of Abigail’s demise in the church register?”

  Lighting his pipe, Rowland pulled thoughtfully on it for a moment. “I’m afraid that rather supports than hinders the suicide theory. From what I have heard, the vicar who held the living here at that time was from the school of fire and brimstone. If Abigail died by her own hand, he would have considered her memory one to be shunned, not recorded among the names of the righteous in the parish record.”

  He almost had me there, for a minute. Then I remembered something: my first meeting with Ben and his reason for demonstrating outside the Hallelujah Revival Chapel. The elders had refused to bury a child in consecrated ground because she had died without being christened. That quaint notion was a throw-back to the good old days when the unshriven, including suicides, had been buried outside the churchyard, in unconsecrated ground. If the old vicar had been the rigid puritan Rowland described, he would not have overlooked this blighting tradition.

  Rowland perked up when I pointed out this detail. Whatever her sins, Abigail was tucked away inside the family vault. He wasn’t quite a convert yet, but he did agree to consider, theoretically, the idea of murder. “I suppose,” he said, “the doctor on the case may have suspected that all was not as it should be, but in dealing with a well-to-do family a humble GP might well have been afraid to call in the authorities and stir up a rumpus. To accuse a man of sterling reputation of contriving his wife’s death would be pretty risky—unless there was a motive. We keep coming back to that, Ellie, the motive. The petty, every-day aggravations you suggested just aren’t enough.”

  Downcast but not d
efeated, I confessed that my villainizing of Arthur Grantham was based mainly on my growing liking for Abigail, and my distrust of any man with eyes set close together.

  If he saw anything ludicrous in this reasoning, Rowland was too much of a gentleman to say so. Tamping tobacco into his pipe, he reached for a match and asked now he could be of help in unravelling the truth.

  “I don’t know that you can,” I said. “But you are my best hope. The vicarage is even older than our house, and our closest neighbour. Is it possible that some of the records kept by previous vicars are still here somewhere? If so, I wonder if you would be willing to see if you can find anything that would provide some insight into Abigail’s life with Arthur? This may sound far-fetched, but I have a feeling that if we discover how Abigail died, we may also find the treasure.”

  Rowland assured me that he would be more than pleased to assist in the investigation, though he was, unfortunately, leaving the next day on a three-week visit to Israel. Immediately upon his return, he promised to search the filing system.

  More boxes to be unearthed from cellars and attics! Such seemed to be the story of my life. The delay was disappointing, but I wished Rowland an enjoyable trip with good grace, and told him that I would invite him for dinner upon his return. He was, I thought as I walked home in a mood of sudden depression, likely to be our first and last guest at Merlin’s Court.