The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  The way things looked, all too soon we would be packing our bags and saying our goodbyes. Back to the old humdrum existence. I wondered how I would face life in another drab two-room flat with Tobias my only roommate, while Ben returned to the waiting arms of his long-suffering fiancée. When first mentioned, I had not seriously believed in the existence of this paragon. I had considered her a childish invention, produced on the spur of the moment by Ben to keep me from harbouring false hopes in his direction. Now I was not so sure. He had spoken of her rather often recently. Susan (or was it Sally) was an athletic marvel who could even balance her cheque book.

  “She’ll have to learn to juggle with it, too, if she has to support both of you,” I told him on one embittered occasion, following a three-day attack of writer’s block which he had blamed on my singing as I went about the house. Admittedly I have an atrocious voice but he need not have compared it to whooping cough set loosely to music.

  “Susan, unlike you, considers me perfect,” Ben informed me coldly, before turning on his heel and stalking off. I really didn’t think he had caught my parting thrust of “That’s because she hasn’t lived with you.”

  As he reached the door he turned. “Oh no?” He smiled, quirked an irritating eyebrow, and was gone.

  Dorcas’s spade was leaning abandoned against the herb garden wall. I found her in the washhouse, scouring dried earth from her hands and humming with raucous disregard for tune, worse even than mine, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

  I tossed her a towel. “You sound happy.”

  “Whamo! Glad to see you back.” Dorcas swung round and grabbed hold of my arm with a soapy hand. “Something rather stupendous has happened. Had a marvellous time working in the garden. Heat a bit grim, enough to blister a camel’s hump, kept up the pace by singing, nothing like a good rousing hymn for …”

  “You’ve found the treasure,” I said, scarcely able to breathe.

  “Sorry, can’t win the prize for that one, but …” She unclasped the hand she wasn’t using to hold on to me and in her palm lay a small oval-shaped locket on a slender gold chain, still encrusted with mud, although from its soapy condition, she had been cleaning it up.

  “Pretty,” I said without too much enthusiasm as my vision of a wooden chest spilling over with jewels worth a king’s ransom faded. This was a cheap tinny piece, something I might have owned myself, or Aunt Sybil … no, she wore brooches the size of doorknobs. I looked up at Dorcas, my heart suddenly leaping about in my chest like someone doing the highland fling.

  She read my eyes. “You’ve got it”—she nodded—“on the nose. Abigail’s—see!” Inserting a grimy fingernail into the side of the locket she pried it open like a shell hiding a tiny sea animal. I expected to see a miniature photograph tucked into one side or a clipping of auburn hair, but the locket was empty. I didn’t want to appear negative but …

  “Look!” Pointing with her finger she snowed me the finely traced engraving: To Abigail From M.

  A present from Merlin to his mother? That seemed a pretty safe assumption but all other theories and conjectures led into a maze. Had Abigail deliberately buried the locket in the herb garden, and if so why? Or had she lost it while working there? I preferred not to think this might be another clue. Because if they were now being buried what hope did we have of actually tripping over the treasure? But for Dorcas, the herb garden would never have been touched. I had my hands full with the house, and I doubted if Ben knew a petunia from a dandelion.

  Speaking of the blighted author, he came searching for us to announce that luncheon was being served al fresco under the large beech tree in the garden. He took a quick dekko at the locket, screwed up his eyes, and said that having worked in his Uncle Abe’s pawn shop as a teenager he knew something about jewellery. This little number while not exactly the kind of thing to be given away with three bars of soap, was worth all of two quid. I half expected him to say take it or leave it, but he returned the locket to my hand with “Don’t turn your nose up. That should make a nice little souvenir of your extended holiday at the seaside, if the family is prepared to sell.”

  Ben had spent the morning experimenting with the new Aga in the finally completed kitchen and had prepared a delicious repast of lobster stewed in wine, chilled to icy perfection and dressed in homemade mayonnaise, laced with capers. There were only three of us. Jonas refused to join us, informing Ben that he considered eating outdoors heathen folly. We spread a cloth on the lawn under the dappled shade of the beech tree.

  “Must congratulate you, Ben,” Dorcas said as Ben lifted spinach salad onto my plate, “absolutely lip-smacking, these little brown rolls—super! Forgive me, I must indulge once more.”

  Ben passed her the plate. Flattery did things for him; he looked more cheerful than I had seen him in days. With a touch of nonchalance he volunteered the information that a spoonful of treacle added to the yeast base was the secret for his rolls. “And I do think,” he added, “that this rather understated salad with its lemon and sweet vermouth dressing is the perfect foil for the lobster—subtle but not insipid.”

  “Come off it!” I lay back against the warm grass and let the sun soak deep into my bones. “The only people who talk like that are those creeps who have just started making their own wine in the cellar.” Lifting my glass of cider I intoned deeply while looking down the bridge of my nose. “Robust without being coarse, fragrant but not floral. Sensitive but not lacking in spirit …”

  “Okay, I get the picture.” Ben gave a rather unwilling grin and lay back on the grass; resting his head on his hands, he squinted into the sun. “I admit I can become rather fanatical on the subject of cookery.” He turned his head and looked in my direction. “Rather like you and your Abigail craze.”

  “Before you make any more cracks on that subject,” I replied thoughtfully, “aren’t you somewhat hooked on the lady yourself? Isn’t this lobster one of Abigail’s recipes?”

  Ben used the type of word to which Uncle Merlin had objected, rolled over, and apologized to Dorcas.

  “Don’t worry about me, heard far worse in the school lavatories.” Dorcas tucked Tobias, who was eying the lobster greedily, firmly under one arm and buttered another roll. “Pity, recipes like this are not published any more, plenty of home-grown veg fresh from the garden, herbs to season, nothing out of a tin or from a packet. Bound to be more time-consuming but marvellous dividends! Loads more nutrition and flavour.”

  Ben sat up slowly. The sun filtering through the leaves gave him a greenish mottled appearance, and in the bright light his eyes looked dazed. For some reason I thought of Lazarus rising from the dead. “The Edwardian Lady’s Cookery Book,” he muttered. Repeating the phrase sotto voce several times, he leapt suddenly to his feet, oversetting the lobster dish and causing Tobias to strike out at Dorcas with unsheathed claws and hurl himself across the lawn, his tail blown out like a dandelion clock. Ben ignored the scratch marks on Dorcas’s arm and Tobias’s frenzied retreat; eyes closed, hands pressed to his temples, he was a man awaiting another revelation from above. Apparently he got it. Launching into his own version of an Indian war dance he shouted out, “To hell with Sister Marie Grace!” and before we could ask what in heaven he was going on about, he vanished into the house.

  “I say.” Dorcas looked at me. “Was I responsible in some way for that display of exuberance? Hope I didn’t say anything to unbalance the dear chap!”

  “Quite the opposite; if I’m not mistaken what you have done is given Ben a new lease on life. The novel is dead. Our literary genius is about to write a cookery book, and why not? Uncle Merlin’s will did not specify that the work had to be fiction. I wonder Ben never thought of utilizing his own field of expertise before.”

  I was proved right. When Dorcas and I carried the dishes back into the house we heard the sound of beautiful music, not the mechanical stammering of recent days, but the rapid clatter of the typewriter keys. The race was on.

  Now he was once more a man
with a mission, I hoped Ben would take a good long look at me and realize there was a new trim-line dish on the world menu—me. But he continued to treat me with marked coolness. He did tell me, when I hovered admiringly over his typewriter one day, that he was inserting anecdotes between the recipes and had written to a friend in London asking him to produce some pencil sketches in keeping with the era. But in the main his attitude was very strongly one of “don’t bug me.”

  One thing I did admire was his commitment to see this thing through to the bitter end. He had given his word that he would remain at Merlin’s Court for six months and he had kept to that even if I had done something horrendous to turn him against me. One day a flash of genius told me what that might be. I had never thanked him for the silver photo frame. Ignoring the No Admittance signals vibrating through the closed door of his work room, I went in to apologize.

  “With all that wretched business about the chocolates and your book,” I said, “other matters got brushed aside but I did love my present. Abigail’s picture looks right at home in it. The more I learn about that woman, the more special I know she was. She wasn’t pretty or—”

  “My God,” snapped Ben, thumping the back-spacer with his thumb, “what a creature you are for always harping on appearances. I’m beginning to have some serious doubts about that damned diet of yours—it’s turning you into another bird-brained Narcissus, goggling in every mirror you pass. What’s happened to your sense of values?”

  “This coming from you?” Somehow I managed a creditable snicker as I glowered down at him. “Physical attributes don’t impress you? Hypocrite! You never stopped smacking your lips the first time you saw Vanessa. When she and I were in the same room you never gave me a second glance and don’t tell me it was her mind that held you in thrall!”

  “I thought we were discussing Abigail.” Back-spacing rapidly, Ben did not look up. “Somehow I got the notion that we were all agreed that she was the perfect example of how a woman does not have to be pretty, as you call it, to be beautiful. Remember when I first saw her portrait I said she reminded me of someone? At the time I wasn’t sure who. For starters I thought of Dorcas—there is a similarity of colouring—but one night when you and I were sitting in the drawing room together, talking away, I realized that the person Abigail put me in mind of was you. Oh, don’t panic, not in looks—in other ways.”

  “Like me?” I had to sit down on the nearest chair even though it was already occupied by a stack of paper. Being told I resembled Abigail was like being given a flower, especially when the words came from Ben. To be strong and fine, warm and alive as she had been … I couldn’t think of anything more …

  “We saw it by gas light, the lighting was poor, remember?” Ben pounded away on the keys. “And who knows, we may all have waxed too sentimental over that portrait.”

  I loathed him then. I loathed his rumpled dark hair and his faded sweater and his neat nimble fingers. I hoped they jammed between the keys and had to be amputated. What had I done to make him turn so hostile—spitting meanly at me the way Tobias did when I mistakenly gave him the wrong food?

  “Why don’t you run along like a good girl,” Ben said. “Go and visit the vicar. I’m sure old Roily will be delighted to see you. Oh, I forgot. He telephoned yesterday to reiterate his goodbyes. I gather he had previously offered them in person. Sorry I forgot to tell you.”

  By the next week the dining room was ready for use in its proper capacity and Ben had taken over the loggia as his study. It was rather crammed with displaced pieces of furniture, empty pots of paint, and wallpaper scraps, but he had installed his typewriter on a small table near the window and asked with wintry politeness to be left undisturbed. The closed door was as effective as writing on the wall.

  One evening Dorcas and I decided to drive out to one of the hotels for dinner, partly because with Ben hard at work I had been doing the evening meal (and while I did much better than Dorcas, Ben had spoiled us), but mostly because I wanted an excuse to wear a rather super blue dress I had just purchased. Most of my clothes had been hanging on me like maternity smocks for some weeks, but superstition had prevented my buying new until now. I was still certain that once I boxed up all my old clothes and sent them to the Salvation Army, I would regain two stone overnight. But this evening I decided to burn my boats and bridges, too. Was it the subdued light in my bedroom (one of the bulbs was out) or the sapphire shade of the dress which kindly made my eyes two sizes bigger and the rest of me two sizes smaller, or that I had drawn my hair into a severe knot on top of my head which emphasized the emergence of cheekbones I had never known I possessed? To be truthful, when I looked in the mirror, I was quite taken with myself.

  “You know something, baby doll”—I smoothed out an eyebrow—“you ain’t half bad.” On a tidal wave of newfound confidence I swept down the stairs, through the hall, knocked on the loggia door and, barely waiting for Ben’s unenthusiastic permission to enter, I turned the door handle and went in.

  His back was to me and without turning his head, he muttered, indistinctly, “Well?”

  Advancing slowly I stood immediately behind him, wishing my knees had not taken up their old nervous rattle and, afraid that my voice would go on strike, I took a deep breath.

  “Unless you have come on a matter of national importance, I do wish you would return later.” Ben ran a hand through his hair, removed a pencil from his lips, and began scribbling something on a piece of scratch paper.

  “I won’t take that personally. Unless you have eyes in the back of your head, you can’t know if it’s me or Dorcas, or …”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Ellie, all I need are ears on the side of my head. I would know those footsteps anywhere. You always sound like an army sergeant marching up and down the compound on inspection.”

  So much for my graceful floating entrance. Better get this thing over. What was needed was a small joke to help the job along.

  “That’s because I lost my glass slippers and had to borrow boots from one of the ugly sisters. This is your prime favourite of fairy-tale romance, Cinderella. Outside is Dorcas doing a nice impersonation of Fairy Godmother. But in order to go to the ball I still need our Charming escort, how about it, chum?”

  Ben swung round in his chair. His eyes raked slowly over me, seeming to take in every inch of the blue silk dress, the sheer nylon stockings with nary a wrinkle, and my high-heeled navy sandals. Returning at last to my face, he took a long hard look as though studying a stranger before saying coldly and with complete finality, “I’m sorry, Ellie, I don’t do that kind of work any more.”

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  All those foolish hopes! The myth that Ben would fall a helpless victim to the charms of the updated, stream-lined version of Ellie Simons was at an end. Had I brought this on myself? In losing weight had I become arrogant, conceited, thoughtless, and complacent? Horrible thought! And, naturally, I would be the last to know. Those were not the sort of tidings one’s best friend would hasten to pass along.

  I did ask Dorcas for an honest appraisal, but her opinion was worse than useless. She assured me I was nicer than ever and Ben’s behaviour was probably due to intense concentration. Total involvement with his book. I might have swallowed this if he was not being perfectly charming to Dorcas, Jonas, and even Aunt Sybil on her rare visits to the house.

  “An exile in my own home,” I confided sadly to Tobias. Things are getting rough when the only satisfactory male of one’s acquaintance is a cat, and these days he, too; was something of a deserter, jumping onto Jonas’s lap more readily than he did mine.

  Most of the work on the ground floor was completed. The workmen had left and I now had only to wait for the delivery of the furniture, curtains, and carpets before putting the rooms back together. The drawing room looked exactly as I had hoped it would. Bracket wall lights shed an amber glow over the cream silk wallpaper and the rich tones of the freshly cleaned carpet and dark oak surround. On the mantelpiece
stood the tall brass candlesticks and Dorcas’s yellow Chinese vase. My only regret was that Abigail’s portrait could not hang above them in the place of honour. I mentioned this one day at lunch, adding that discounting the poor artwork the picture did have a special meaning for the house and it was a shame it had never been completed. Dorcas suggested taking it to a gallery or a small art shop for touching up. Jonas, who had been steadily wiping gravy off his plate with a crust of bread, looked up and announced that he’d always been thought by his teachers at school to be rather a dab hand with a paint box. Not that he’d picked up a brush in years, but he didn’t doubt t’was the same as swimming or riding a bicycle—once push came to shove t’would all come back. Jonas had put us in a bind. To refuse would be a slap in the eye, but what if he bungled? “Sure, Jonas,” said Ben. “Go ahead. You certainly can’t do worse than the original artist.” Jonas was watching me with a sparkle in his wicked old eyes, daring me to say him nay, and Ben had not even cared to ask my opinion. Men! How I hated them and myself for not resisting their tyranny. Samson’s strength had evaporated with the loss of his hair, mine with my lost inches. In more ways than one I was not half the girl I used to be.

  On one point though, I did stand firm. I refused to succumb to the old trap of eating to console myself. What I needed was another project in the house, but one that would not require too much time. With the weeks stretching into months, we were now entering September. The sand was running to the bottom of the glass. The six months would be up on October 5. The vicar was still away, but I didn’t fret about that. I had almost given up hope of his uncovering anything that would lead us to the cause of Abigail’s death and through that knowledge to the treasure.