The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  “I’ll have to explain to Tobias,” I said sarcastically, “that he wasn’t the star of this drama at all, just a bit player.”

  “Oh, he was more than that.” Ben met my glare blandly. “He acted as the enemy’s calling card. In addition to his other psychological problems, this weirdo is an egomaniac—hence the telephone calls gloating over his cleverness. Tobias floating in his sack was tangible proof of who was winning this battle of wits.”

  “Will you shut up!” I snarled. “You’re actually getting a kick out of facing off against the enemy.”

  “Come now.” Dorcas, who had been sitting very quietly as though lost in thought, roused herself. “Mustn’t excite yourself, doctor’s orders.”

  “Try and see it this way,” Ben reasoned. “For months you have been fascinated with Abigail, trying to establish some order to what you knew about her, hoping it would lead you to the treasure. For me, even with the incentive of the inheritance, the trail never blazed the way it did for you. Somehow the whole notion seemed a bit fanciful. You were happy fitting the pieces together so I left you to it. But now we are dealing with another kind of chase and I don’t want to be carried out on a stretcher without knowing how, and why, and whom.” He moved to the side of the bed and lightly touched my hand. “I think the time has indeed come for a return of all suspects to the scene of the crime. How about a family reunion this weekend?”

  “Have a heart,” grated Dorcas, “the girl’s still on her sickbed.”

  Ben’s eyes met mine. “Bring me my crutches,” I cried. “What a deplorable hostess I am, lolling in bed with guests expected any day.”

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  Surveillance. That was the key to success and safety. Ben repeated this maxim often. While discreetly watching the suspects, we would as carefully watch each other. During the day Dorcas would be on permanent duty, unobtrusively keeping tabs on Ben and me in the event that either of us was left alone at any time with one of the suspects.

  “Nothing too obvious,” Ben warned her. “Keep a low profile. You don’t knit, by any chance? In works of fiction, genteel lady spies always sit tucked away in dark corners clicking away with their needles. No one ever notices them.”

  “Nor old people neither.” Jonas nodded sagely, stroking his moustache. “Folks don’t look at us twice. Don’t want to be reminded that one day they’ll end up in the same boat. Fat, thin, tall, short, raving beauty or ugly enough to sink ships, we all wrinkle up and look alike.”

  “Okay, Jonas.” Ben grinned. “Never let it be said life doesn’t start at seventy. A life of espionage opens up before you, but for cripe’s sake be subtle, don’t keep trotting through the house with a watering hose and a bag of fertilizer.”

  Jonas cast a knowing eye out the kitchen window where, for the first time in a week, the sky was a clear limpid blue. “Looks like rain, I’d best come inside and do the silver.”

  “If you keep this up,” said Ben, patting the old man on the back, “we’ll give you a shilling a week raise and elevate you to butler. Dorcas, I want you to camp down on a mattress at the side of Ellie’s bed. That way you can sleep in relays. I’ll give Freddy my room and move into the one next to yours, Ellie, so you have nothing to fear. You do agree that the doors should be left unlocked to give the enemy ample opportunity to stage his attack when the lights go out?”

  These prep sessions did little to still my foreboding. What if, as Dorcas had suggested, we were the victims of a conspiracy? If I had serious misgivings about one or more of our guests busily planning the social event of the season—a double funeral for Ben and me—Dorcas was even more upset. Since the night of Tobias’s near-tragedy, her brisk and chipper manner had paled, and my accident following so closely had left Dorcas a very troubled woman. I would come across her at intervals during the day, sitting limply, staring into space.

  On the Friday evening a half-hour before the guests were due, she followed me into the drawing room and begged me to speak to Ben and have him call the whole thing off. “Ellie, this is madness!” She caught hold of my arm and pushed me down into a chair, as though hoping to hold me captive long enough to bring me to my senses. “Must put a stop to it. You’re building a volcano. Evil bubbling away under the surface now, but it’s gathering force, ready to erupt—destroying everyone in this house.”

  Poor Dorcas, my devoted friend. She didn’t even sound like herself, and her eyes were glazed and feverish. I did hope she wasn’t coming down with another of her headaches. I squeezed her hand and told her to go upstairs and rest. Even had I wanted to, I could not stop the relentless march of feet drumming to our front door. My kin were already on their way. I had taken one precaution. That morning I had driven into the village to visit Rose, Brassy’s grandmother, and left Tobias in her keeping.

  Dorcas did not go upstairs and rest. A short time later I saw her through the window in what appeared to be earnest conversation with Jonas. After a minute or two they moved away in the direction of the stables. Comparing strategies, I thought. What a loyal pair they were. Somewhat consoled, I went upstairs to dress.

  Red for courage. I slipped on the flame-coloured dress, and smoothed a touch of the same shade gloss over my lips. Dorcas returned to the house. Apparently she had taken Ben’s knitting request seriously, for she emerged from her room with a yard-long purple and citrus wool strip flung over her arm, needles jutting out one end like a psychedelic tiger baring its teeth.

  She seemed in rather better spirits when we walked down the stairs together. “Only things I knit, scarves,” she confessed as I admired her handiwork. “Tried a jumper once, but the pattern lost me when it reached the armholes. Couldn’t make head nor tail of all that decreasing, increasing nonsense—slip one, drop one, loop the loop—lost patience. That jumper became another scarf. Rather wide but warm.”

  I was glad to hear her sound more like her old self. The talk with Jonas must have done her good. “Never fear,” she whispered as we entered the drawing room, “I shall be right behind you at all times.”

  “Don’t overdo it,” I whispered back. “You just took off part of my heel.”

  Whatever their other vices, lateness was not a family trait. The guests all arrived within minutes of each other at seven o’clock, were shown to their rooms, given an opportunity to freshen up and unpack if they wished, and by eight were all assembled in the drawing room. They talked among themselves sipping sherry while Jonas did his stuff with the silver tray heaped with cheese straws and mushrooms à la grecque. Freddy looked at them with dismay. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Aunt Sybil didn’t make these and I’ve been dreaming of her tantalizing titbits all day.”

  “She’s away at the moment, visiting friends,” I said. But Freddy quickly swallowed his disappointment along with a mushroom while greasily juggling four others.

  “Will you stop that!” Uncle Maurice turned on him. “Makes you look like a sea lion at the circus.”

  Aunt Lulu murmured, “Don’t get on at the boy, dear,” as she turned over a china ornament to check its maker.

  Freddy ignored them both. Arching his neck he tossed and caught another mushroom in his mouth. His hair trailed back in a pirate’s pigtail, and he wore a turquoise figure of a naked woman swinging from one ear. A conservative middle-class jury would have branded him the felon, but I wasn’t sure I could convict him on “appearance.” Aunt Astrid with her regal crown of white hair and her high-necked buttoned blouse pinned with its cameo brooch, and Vanessa, more gorgeous than ever in a daffodil-yellow silk suit, appeared the perfect mother and daughter combination. Uncle Maurice epitomized the man who always returns his library books on time, while Aunt Lulu represented the women of the world who take their iron capsules every day, serve liver every Thursday, and always shop at the January sales. Yet, all of these paragons had hidden their guilty little peccadilloes until publication in Uncle Merlin’s will.

  “And to what,” enquired Aunt Astrid, “do we owe the privilege of
this belated invitation?”

  “Darling.” Vanessa turned her perfect profile towards her mother. “Don’t be dense. Ellie couldn’t resist showing off her creative homemaking talents and her youthful—prepuberty—figure.”

  I saw Dorcas’s head come up sharply like a pointer on the scent, but her fingers kept clicking away at the needles, lips mouthing knit one, purl two. Her eyes caught mine and moved on around the circle, the guard dog sitting in its darkened corner.

  I smiled at Vanessa. “Darling, in all of us—–even you—there is a fat girl waiting to come out.”

  “Come now.” Ben picked up the silver tray which Jonas had set down when he left the room. “Ellie felt the time had come for a little celebration.”

  “Aren’t you counting your guppies a little early?” asked Freddy amiably as he reached for another fistful of canapés. “The money isn’t yours yet, old chap.”

  “We’re not talking about the money.” Ben set the tray down again and reached for a cheese straw. “We’re celebrating our having survived the last six months. That hasn’t always been easy.”

  No one choked on his food, dropped his wine-glass, or began to twitch. I was disappointed. A crashing boom from the gong in the hall announced that dinner was served.

  This meal promptly struck a false note when Ben discovered that Jonas had heated the jellied madrilene intended to be served over ice. Unruffled by his boss’s baleful glare, the old man elbowed his way round the table, pouring the wine. “Cold soup,” he chortled, wheezing down the back of Aunt Astrid’s neck as he stooped to fill her glass, “on purpose! Hrumph!”

  No complaints, however, could be justly levelled against the rolled roast stuffed with layers of smoked ham and oyster dressing. Uncle Maurice never laid his fork down, but Aunt Astrid whispered audibly to Vanessa, “All this prissy foreign cooking! I told you there was something very peculiar about that young man. No wonder he hasn’t rushed to marry her.”

  Dessert came and went. The remainder of the evening proved uneventful. Uncle Maurice, who had sat on his dignity until the brandy was poured, mellowed with each glass. So much so that when we all parted for the night, he clapped Ben on the shoulder, saying, “Shocking disappointment, that will, but the time comes when wounded feelings have to be set aside. If you would like any investment advice, dear boy, I am your man—for a very reasonable percentage.”

  As agreed, Dorcas stayed in my room, and we took turns sleeping, but morning found us alive and well. I took the last watch; to while away the hour before dawn, I read through Abigail’s two journals again. The household ledger told me she had been a thrifty but generous woman, often buying items of clothing for the village children. Perhaps to cover these expenditures she had purchased little meat but large amounts of dairy products for several months. The recipe listing showed that she had been Ben’s type of cook—an artist.

  As Ben had informed me when he first looked at the journals, a couple of pages were missing from the recipe collection. I had surmised that Abigail had found them unsatisfactory and had removed them but … I suddenly shot away from my pillows into a sitting position. Abigail was not like that. She would not have made the entries in her neat round hand without previous experimentation with each dish. Besides, those entries had not been neatly clipped out with scissors, they had been ripped off leaving a ragged edge. Again, not Abigail’s way. Those missing entries had to mean something. Were they the final clue? I could have strangled myself with my bare hands. All those weeks and months wasted, and Ben—a fat lot of help he had been. Where, where could those pages be hidden? Calm down, think. They came from the S section, therefore to be found filed under stove, sofa, soup tureen—damn, what I needed was a dictionary, an encyclopedia or … a telephone directory.

  A bell buzzed inside my head. Ben and I had always used the lazy expedient of asking the operator for information. The house had owned a phone book, outdated and falling to shreds, but … the secret drawer. I could see myself in instant replay the morning I went looking for photographs of Uncle Arthur, and mentally writing off the old bills, the travel brochures, and the obsolete phone book as more of Aunt Sybil’s stuff to be sent down to the cottage. Aunt Sybil had the directory! Could I justify breaking in and searching the premises? Dear Aunt Sybil, bless that wonderful Victorian virtue that never permitted her to throw anything away. The phone book was most likely a futile last-ditch grab at straws, but as soon as I could get out of the house Dorcas and I would go and retrieve it. I went down to tackle the kitchen, which had been left to Jonas’s ministrations last night. The best that could be said was that he had done better than Aunt Sybil. I reached for a damp cloth to wipe off the sticky counter top, picked up a dish of butter left out to attract any mice who might come back now Tobias was gone on his holidays, turned and saw the refrigerator. The door was smeared all over in sticky red streaks. What now? Jonas writing reminders to himself? I’d strangle him. Wringing out my cloth I turned to wipe off the mess and stopped.

  At close range the letters separated and cleared; I found I was squeezing that cloth so hard water spattered onto my bare feet. “Who is Dorcas? What is she?”

  I was standing immobile when she came in.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Dorcas said, “thought you might …”

  “Look.” The accusation screamed at us in angry red blotches from the refrigerator. Dorcas dragged out a chair and sat down, hands riffling through her already untidy hair.

  “What does it mean?” I asked, and was afraid for her to answer. Unwillingly I was remembering Rowland Foxworth’s words. Six months ago Dorcas was a stranger. And even now there were a lot of gaps in what I knew of her. What was I doing? Friends trusted each other. “Tell me,” I said.

  Dorcas squared her shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. “Obvious, someone knows who I am.”

  “A Russian spy?” I joked feebly. Perhaps this was a nightmare brought on by emotional stress and I would soon wake up.

  “Sorry, Ellie. Haven’t been quite straight with you from the beginning. That business about wanting a change from teaching for a while was true, but had my own reasons for coming here. You might say I have a connection with this house.”

  “Dorcas, this doesn’t mean …” I couldn’t continue, my throat was closing. For the first time I realized that it was rather odd Dorcas had never spoken about her past. On the day of her arrival and on one or two other occasions she had started to say something about one of her grandparents but had cut herself short, saying she didn’t want to bore me. Not a word about mother, father, brother, or sister.

  “Mustn’t believe I’m engaged in this murderous, heinous plot against you, Ellie. You’re like a sister to me. Think the world of you and Ben.”

  Ben had said that criminals often had the nicest faces. “Then tell me,” I begged, “what’s the big dark secret?”

  “Can’t. Sorry, Ellie, other factors involved. Have to play the game by the rules up to the end.”

  Whose end? “Dorcas,” I said quietly, “we’re not on the hockey field now, murder isn’t a sporting proposition. If your secret, the secret the enemy has discovered, has any bearing on whether or not I will stay alive, I need to hear it.”

  “No connection at all. You have my word, Ellie, that in due course I will tell all. Have a feeling you will be more pleased than not. What we mustn’t do is fall into the enemy’s trap. Plain as the nose on your face, trying to foist a quarrel on us with this poison pen business. But undervalued our friendship. We are still friends, aren’t we, Ellie?”

  I said yes, and I meant it. If I couldn’t trust Dorcas, who was left?

  Vanessa came yawning into the kitchen, demanding a cup of coffee, and without another word Dorcas left. She didn’t come down for breakfast in answer to the gong and I understood. Neither of us would be completely comfortable in each other’s presence until those questions Who is Dorcas? What is she? were answered. “Where’s Dorcas,” Ben muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he passed me
the marmalade. He thought she was slacking off on her guard duty.

  “Are you enquiring about the housekeeper?” sniffed Aunt Astrid. “I saw the woman walking in the garden about fifteen minutes ago. The help these days! Out admiring the flowers when she should be dusting the furniture or making beds.”

  Ben might be irritated with Dorcas, but he wasn’t about to let someone else take swipes at her. “Dorcas is more friend than housekeeper,” he said.

  As matters progressed I had no opportunity of speaking with Ben alone that morning, and I saw nothing of Dorcas. The ladies autocratically demanded a tour of the house, and Ben’s security system necessitated that the men tag along. Aunt Astrid nosily opened Dorcas’s door when we reached her bedroom, but it was empty. “Perhaps she went into the village,” I said, and tried to concentrate on Uncle Maurice’s suggestions for further improvements to the house.

  “Well, Ellie, you have made a passable job of this house,” huffed Aunt Astrid, “but you should have used more mauve.”

  After elevenses the men and Aunt Lulu settled down at the card table for a game of bridge; Aunt Astrid sat with her embroidery hoop in a corner by the window and Vanessa said she would do something meaningful—varnish her nails. Jonas could have the dubious honour of watching her while I crept off to the cottage. So much for my plan of taking Dorcas with me. Where the hell was she? Who was she?

  Aunt Sybil’s sitting room looked worse than I remembered—the fireside rug dragged out at a slippery angle, the coffee table still littered with dirty crockery, and an overturned teacup by a chair. Looked like Chief Inspector, New Scotland Yard, had already searched the premises. I really would have to come and give this place a clean whether Aunt Sybil was offended or not. The mantelpiece was edge-to-edge rubble, newspaper clippings, tangled balls of string, and stacks of magazines. I searched through these just on the off chance that the phone book had been inserted somewhere. Forward and onwards. Gingerly I removed a greasy paper bag from my path across the room. All four corners of the sitting room were stacked with boxes and spilt contents, but these turned up nothing useful. The kitchen was an impossibility, my stomach could not face more than a cursory glance through cupboards. I did check the fridge; Aunt Sybil might have used the phone book to drain the lettuce. Passing the cellar door I found it locked, but it was unlikely she would have taken one box down there when all the others had been incorporated into her decorating scheme. I hesitated at her bedroom door (snooping through this most personal room bothered me), but I reminded myself that I had already been in here the morning I found her note. Nothing could have changed, and nothing had; crossing the floor was like tiptoeing through a mine field. But, miraculously, on the dressing table sat a box, the box. Right on top I spied a travel brochure and immediately underneath sat the phone directory. Instantly I got cold feet. This was a wild goose chase—how likely was it that my mind and Uncle Merlin’s ran on parallel lines? With fingers trembling, I opened up to the S section; sure enough, neatly taped down were the missing pages to Abigail’s recipe journal. I scanned them rapidly. That was it! I could not wait to show Ben this find. Knowing him, he would very likely conclude that our search was completed, that these pages contained not just another clue, but the stuff of which treasures are made. Somehow, I didn’t think so, not because this wasn’t very special, but I could not perceive Uncle Merlin ripping those pages out of his mother’s book—even in the interests of mystery. So many pieces of the puzzle were still missing.