The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Be quiet,” I said. “Look, the egg is in two halves like a locket, careful—don’t shove while I open it; we don’t want to scramble the insides.”

  What was inside was a delicately wrought platinum branch on which perched a shimmering blue bird, wings spanned for flight, amber beak lifted as if in song.

  “That bird,” I explained patiently to the men, a species not reared to appreciate the finer things in life, “that there bird is sapphire and the eyes emeralds.”

  “Your engagement ring is going to look pretty chintzy after this,” sighed Ben.

  “I don’t think I want to talk about rings right now.” I shut the bird away inside the egg. To think that Abigail owned this magnificent piece of art and she was forced to sell her mother’s garnet ring to start a new life.” I turned to Rowland. “You may mink poorly of her going off with another man, but she was a remarkable woman. Even when her situation was desperate she took the time to make the notation in her housekeeping ledger that she had sold that ring. When items went missing in those days, one of the maids usually took the rap. Abigail didn’t take any chances.”

  Rowland smiled, and I thought again what an incredibly nice man he was. He deserved a loving, helpful wife, someone with plenty of energy. Jill—he would meet her at the wedding, and who knew what might develop with a little help from his friends? “How about a brief prayer for her, that whatever became of her, Abigail Grantham may rest in peace?” he suggested.

  And Bentley T. Haskell, atheist, agreed.

  “An attempt on your lives, and who, may I ask, are the culprits?” shrilled Aunt Astrid, when Ben informed her and the others why we were late for tea. “Police surrounding the house! I have never been so mortified in my life! Fetch my coat, Vanessa, we are leaving. I refuse to remain another minute in a place where I am accused of murder.”

  “But not single-handedly,” Freddy comforted her. “We are, I presume,”—he winked grotesquely at me—“all in this together? What a lark. I’ve always wanted to be involved in a conspiracy. Will someone fill me in on what I have missed so far?”

  Uncle Maurice snorted. “Shut up,” he ordered his son, “and stop snivelling, Lulu. If what Ellie and Ben claim is true …”

  “Do you want to see my bruises?” I asked irately.

  Vanessa feigned shock. “Darling, a lady never taxes her knickers down in the drawing room.”

  Uncle Maurice spoke over her. “I was not doubting your veracity, simply weighing the facts. Here, sit down, Ellie. You should be off your feet.”

  “She’s not having a baby,” mocked Freddy.

  “No,” agreed Aunt Lulu, drying her eyes, “babies take nine months, and from the sound of things, she may not have that long to live.”

  “That’s an unnecessarily pessimistic view.” Uncle Maurice patted me on the shoulder and helped me heavily into a chair. “Ben, hope you won’t think I’m nitpicking when I say the word murder has a damned nasty ring to it. I prefer to think of these admittedly unfortunate espisodes as practical jokes that went rather too far. Now, if the perpetrator would sportingly own up, I am sure we can keep all this unpleasantness within the family.”

  He looked around hopefully. No one blushingly raised his hand or lowered guilty eyes. “Very well,” continued Uncle Maurice as though speaking to children in a classroom where the blackboard eraser was missing, “no purpose will be served in any of us walking out tonight. In fact, quite the opposite. While we remain together we all have alibis. Astrid, if you wish to stage a tantrum, that is your business. I for one have no desire to paddle my car through a rainstorm—at two miles an hour I’d be lucky to reach home by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I take it, then”—Ben smiled affably—“that we can count on all of you for dinner tonight?” Receiving the nod of assent, if not approval, he and I went out into the kitchen.

  “I do hope,” he said, kissing me, “that the old saying about marrying the family isn’t true. Uncle Maurice was the only one who offered even a backhanded word of sympathy for our ordeal.”

  “Too busy worrying about their own necks.” I pressed my face against his, men drew away, watching him carefully. “You seem remarkably sanguine. Is there something you’re not telling me? I get the feeling you are not so worried about our shrinking life expectancy any more.”

  “Are you beginning to read my mind already? I thought that only came after years of marriage.” He caressed my cheek. “There is someone I must talk with, then if my theory is correct, I will tell you why we are no longer in danger—if in fact we ever were—–except through bungling error.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think you and I were ever the intended victims of this plot. We just kept getting in the way. So many aspects did not make sense because we were looking at this business from the wrong angle. This afternoon I realized where we had gone wrong in the first place, which changed everything.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Dorcas?”

  “No,” said Ben. “I am worried about her, too; where she fits in I don’t know, so we have no idea whether she may have placed herself in some kind of danger. Keep hoping that Rowland has some news for us soon.”

  “If you would only tell me what you suspect,” I urged.

  “Not until we have fed the mob in the drawing room, got them tucked away in bed, and not before I have spoken to my source. Chances are that I could still be wrong. I haven’t been right often—so far.”

  The doorbell buzzed, and we both raced out into the hall, hoping desperately that this would be Dorcas, or Aunt Sybil at least. Freddy was ahead of us and he had the door thrown open against the wild wet night and was inviting someone in—a short, skinny female, someone with spiky greenish hair.

  “Jill,” I cried, rushing to hug her.

  “Gosh, you look fab.” She started patting me down the sides as if to see if I had the missing parts stashed somewhere on my person. “Hi, Ben, sorry I didn’t get back to you and Ellie about the hypnosis bit. I’ve been off meditating with my guru in the Scottish highlands—Tibet is financially out these days—but he turned out to have a disgustingly physical mentality, besides he said he was a vegetarian and I caught him eating flies. But the spider did teach me something—hypnotism; I had already taken a correspondence course on the subject, but anyway that is principally why I am here, to help. I’m not too late, am I?”

  How could I tell my sweet guileless friend that she had entered a house of murder? As it happened I didn’t have to say much to her at all Freddy seemed to have fallen victim to her mesmeric powers. He couldn’t take his eyes off her and she seemed equally smitten with him. Talk about One Enchanted Evening. One mutual gasp of spiritual recognition and they both went into the trance state, which did not help the social aspect of the evening. They neither spoke to each other nor to anyone else. The evening dragged on, I almost said at funeral pace, but lately I had felt that the march to the grave was a hurried affair. At last everyone began yawning in unison, and they all, except Aunt Astrid, said they would seek their beds. Freddy did return to the world of reality at that point to tell her that if she sat up armed with her needle and thread after everyone had retired people might wonder what dark thoughts kept her from sleeping.

  “I will never”—Aunt Astrid lifted her head and swooped out into the hall—“darken these doors again.”

  Things were looking up. Ben and I, alone at last, went into the kitchen. What a day this had been—beginning with that question regarding Dorcas’s true identity. Had she taken off because she felt my faith in her was shaken beyond repair?

  Ben was putting on his coat. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll be back in a flash. Put the kettle on, I’m bringing Jonas back for a cupper.”

  So our trusty gardener was the source. What could Jonas tell us? I had barely set the kettle on the Aga top when Ben was back, alone, eyes blazing grimly in his rain slick face.

  “Hurry,” he yelled. “Grab a coat. We may already be too late. Here, take
mine.” He yanked it off, throwing it over my shoulders. His panic was contagious.

  “Where are we going? Where is Jonas?”

  Ben grabbed my hand and dragged me through the garden door into the driving rain, hurtling me across the sopping lawn. “Another farewell note—this time saying Jonas has gone to visit his mother.”

  “But that’s ludicrous. Jonas doesn’t have a mother. She’s dead.”

  “Exactly, her address is Tombstone Villa.”

  “Then, oh God, Ben—those other notes!” I wasn’t running. My feet were sliding along under me as Ben dragged me behind him.

  “No time,” he cried. “We may already be too late. What a fool I have been. I guessed this afternoon, but I thought we were safe to wait a few hours, until I could talk to Jonas without interruption.”

  We had turned right through the iron gates onto the coast road and had now entered the churchyard, weaving in and out among the stones. “Here,” said Ben, and my feet stumbled to a standstill. We were at the family vault.

  “Here? But Jonas’s mother is not …” I stopped because I knew Ben was right. We had reached our destination. Evil was all around us.

  “Ellie,” said Ben curtly, “I want you to leave me here and run to the vicarage. Rouse Foxworth and get the police out here.”

  “Sorry.” I refused through clenched teeth, trying to still their chattering. “I’m coming with you. Two of us have double the chance. You know who the killer is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but you are not coming.”

  “Try to stop me.” I kissed him quickly and hand in hand we went into the vault I expected total darkness. Ben had a torch with him, but he did not need to turn it on. The icy stone room was flickeringly alive with shadowed candlelight. We saw Jonas at once—laid out stiffly on top of Abigail’s tomb. Feet together, hands folded on his chest. Oh God, I thought, he’s already dead. I loved Jonas. A distended shadow moved in the corner of the room. As we watched, a woman stepped out into the shivering light, carrying a lifted spade.

  “Aunt Sybil!” I must have said the words out loud for she looked up, mildly irritated as she had seemed sometimes when I arrived unannounced at the cottage. “I did hope,” she said reprovingly, “that I would be able to finish up here before you two turned up. I should have known you would come poking your noses in. That’s why I left that note on Merlin’s door. I hoped that if you found him gone you would run around like chickens with their heads cut off, but you smarty-pants had already guessed. I saw you go in here with the vicar this afternoon, after your little accident, but I could not wait to see you come out. I had to make my plans for Merlin here.”

  “Merlin?” I said, “Auntie dear, this is Jonas, not Merlin. You are just a little confused.”

  “No, she’s not.” Ben spoke up calmly as though this were a cocktail party. “Jonas is the one who died six months ago, not Merlin. It must have been quite simple really, two old men whom no one ever saw, both with a macabre sense of humour, deciding that when the gardener with his serious heart condition died his master would step into his muddy boots. That way Merlin could watch the outcome of his Last Will and Testament. The doctor signed the death certificate in happy ignorance, and Mr. Bragg admitted he had only seen Merlin once, for the writing of the will, and that he was all muffled up in thick scarves.”

  “Do we really see old people as all alike?” I asked sadly, looking at Uncle Merlin’s rigid form. “Of course he grew the moustache, and when we saw him that night in the kitchen he had his teeth out and was wearing the stupid night-cap, but I should have known. Even with the lights turned down and meeting Jonas outside with the snow blowing.”

  “Now, Ellie, don’t go on so,” said Ben in an inane voice. “We must apologize to Aunt Sybil for this untimely intrusion. What exactly are we interrupting?”

  “I decided that in view of his devotion to his mother, wicked adulteress that she was, I would set him over her tomb and make an effigy out of him. Not that Abigail is buried here as you already know.” Aunt Sybil smiled slyly. “She was carrying on with that weak-kneed artist boy, little more than a teenager he was and she over thirty. Poor Uncle Arthur, he was so mortified. But I helped make things up to him. When I came for the funeral I found her dog and killed it for him. Even the nicest men tend to be a bit squeamish but it wasn’t the first time for me. I had a cat once, and it wouldn’t let me dress it up in a bonnet and shawl so I drowned it. Merlin was staying with us at the seaside at the time, and oh, the silly tears! He wasn’t quite certain—whether it was an accident, I mean. Boys are so dense. I hoped he would remember when I sank that horrid old torn of yours in the moat, but there are none so blind as those that will not see. He never even knew his mother tried to contact him all those years. I took care of that. I sent all the letters back marked ‘Refused’ and after a while they stopped coming.”

  “Uncle Arthur admired your …” Ben struggled for the word, “fortitude?”

  “Oh yes, he thought me absolutely sweet.” Aunt Sybil smoothed out the cement mixture with the back of her spade. “I do hope this doesn’t crack. Life is full of mixed blessings. If those workmen had come when promised to fix the iron gates, I wouldn’t have had this stuff on hand. I would have had to think of some other way of disposing of poor Merlin. And what a pity; this seems so à propos. Now what was I saying about Uncle Arthur? Ah, I remember, he doted on me and I suppose I was in love with him, too. I always hoped that poor Merlin would grow into a man like his father, but no spine and, fortunately, no imagination. Half a century I wasted trying to mould him, loving the man I wanted him to be. You see I had been given a glimpse of what I wanted. Dear Uncle Arthur, he loved the way I managed the house.”

  “Later, didn’t you ever think of moving away, making a new life for yourself?” Ben was inching forward. I was reminded of the childhood game of statues. Each time Aunt Sybil looked up, he froze.

  “What, and leave Merlin?” Aunt Sybil looked positively shocked. “I loved him, or thought I did. Lately I have begun to wonder if my feelings were a prolonged infatuation. You didn’t understand the kind of love I had for him, did you? And that’s where you made your mistake. Animal passion isn’t rational, it changes. To hatred in this case. I felt the first stirrings when he and Jonas sat chuckling over their masquerade; I had been so happy when I realized that vulgar common man was dying. Merlin had fetched a London specialist to see him, and then they had to go and spoil it all. Jonas took the news that his number was up very well.… He’d always thought he had something the matter with him so he was bound to be pleased. In a joking way he said his only regret was that he couldn’t be at his own funeral. That gave them the idea. Merlin had me write and invite all the family down so he could choose his heirs. The treasure hunt and all the other hocus-pocus was an added inspiration. He took one of his peculiar fancies to you both. Thought you had spunk.”

  “What did Uncle Merlin plan to do at the end of six months, rise from the dead?” My fear was evaporating. I felt slightly fuzzy. Why was I standing in a room full of tombs, communing with a mad woman while she cemented up the ex-love of her life. “Is he,” my voice quavered slightly, “still alive?”

  “Oh yes.” She nodded cheerfully. “Only drugged. That’s half the fun. I’m hoping he will come round just before I cover up his face. You were asking about Merlin’s plans. He told me nothing about the treasure or those childish clues, but I think that originally he intended to let the dice fall where they might. If you accomplished the goals set for you, the house and money would be yours, exactly as the will said. But I told you he wasn’t a realist. He became fond of you. He said Ellie had restored the house to the way it was in his mothers day. As though I didn’t work my fingers to the bone. He made a new life without me, he didn’t need me; now, if he had been dead I could have understood.… Well, enough of that. Whatever happened he didn’t want you to leave. If you were not eligible for the inheritance, he was going to face the legal consequences and return like Lazarus to es
tablish your rights of property.”

  “Aunt Sybil,” Ben said admiringly, “you really are an incredible woman, pulling the wool over our eyes as you did, disappearing so that instead of being suspicious of you we would worry about your safety. And all the time you were hiding out in your own cottage, weren’t you?”

  Aunt Sybil nodded and giggled. “So much fun. But it wasn’t you I wanted to worry about me, it was him. I left those water wings on the ground near his bonfire so he would think I had drowned, but what did he care? And what could I expect after the way he spoke to me at your dinner party? Before that, I had done a couple of things to show I was not pleased with the new arrangement but after that night I definitely decided to kill him.”

  “You always seemed so devoted to him,” I said.

  “I was.” She dropped another load of cement on top of Uncle Merlin and patted it into shape. “Stupid, of course. These one-sided affairs are never meant to last. For years I used to dream about going to the South of France on my honeymoon.”

  So that was the reason for the travel brochures in the secret drawer.

  “I’ve had my days of being hurt, now it’s his turn.” The wicked eyes looked out of the bland face. “Does this look even? I want his knees to look right, knobby and disjointed.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Aunt Sybil looked relieved. “As you young people would say, I’m into total honesty now. Goodness knows I deluded myself for years. That miserable man wasted my life.” She hummed as she trimmed a rough edge. “My mother died before she could warn me about the selfishness of men. I didn’t mind going to the cottage, I dared to hope that it would become our love nest; every time a knock sounded at the door I hoped it was him.”