“Well said, Sir Robert!” Mrs. Dovedale, the woman who ran the corner grocery shop, blushed a smile at him and he, the peer of the realm, responded with a gallant bow. They had known each other from the days when they were children. Mrs. D. had told me once that he had quite often come into the shop, when her father stood behind the counter, to buy a paper cone of sweets in the holidays when he was home from boarding school. And she had thought him as splendid and unreachable as the tins of biscuits on the topmost shelf. Looking at him now, I wondered if Sir Robert had ever felt a youthful interest in the pretty girl Mrs. Dovedale must once have been. Had he wished that the difference in their stations in life did not prohibit the blossoming of a love that would lend a rainbow radiance to their entire lives?
“What do you think, Ellie?” asked Bunty.
“About Karisma?” I blinked to bring the room back into focus. “I believe we should put the matter up for vote.”
“An entirely proper approach, Mrs. Haskell,” agreed Brigadier Lester-Smith. He was invariably at his crispest when the world was restored to the sanity of bylaws and the amendments thereof. He moved to the head of the table, where his highly polished briefcase awaited him. “If I may suggest that we all be seated, I will read the minutes of the last meeting, and if they are accepted as read, ask for a motion from the floor.”
“There are no minutes from the last meeting.” Bunty plopped impatiently down in her chair. “Miss Bunch croaking put the kibosh on our fun and games.”
“I meant the meeting
prior
to that unhappy evening.”
The brigadier snapped open his briefcase with the sound of a gunshot, causing Sylvia Babcock to cringe as she subsided into her chair. How, I wondered, avoiding her eye, was she coping with Heathcliff, the bête noire?
“Forget the rubbishing minutes!” Sir Robert took his seat across from me. “I say, let’s get on to the business at hand, what! what!”
“I make a motion”—Mrs. Dovedale leaned her bosom, possibly unintentionally, towards him—“that the Chitterton Fells Library League invite Karisma to attend, in a fund-raising capacity, the memorial benefit for Miss Bunch.”
“And I second the motion,” groused Mr. Poucher, “so we can take a vote and I can head back to the farm and milk the cow before my aged mother turns blue at having to drink her tea black.”
Brigadier Lester-Smith picked up a sharply pointed pencil with which to record the outcome. “May I please have a show of hands from all those in favour?”
“I’m not sure how to vote.” Sylvia Babcock inched up a finger to indicate her indecision. “I’ve got to say I’d like to meet Karisma, but I hate crowds, they scare me to pieces.”
“What doesn’t scare the living daylights out of you?” Mr. Poucher, along with everyone at the table excepting Gladstone Spike and myself, had his hand in the “aye” position. And I could feel an irresistible tingling of the fingers. What Sir Robert had said about ghosts had struck home. I was one of those susceptible human beings who did not so much believe, as like to pretend they believed, in the terrors of the supernatural because it added a bit of spice to life. Without the possibility of unearthly intervention by Hector Rigglesworth, my having been present at the death of Miss Bunch would have lacked the mystique with which I had subsequently endowed that sad event. Everyone loves a ghost story, and I, with Brigadier Lester-Smith, had succumbed to the temptation to figure in the saga of the library ghost. It wasn’t a crime to want to make myself feel important in the local scheme of things. Any more than it was a crime that no one had sung “Happy Birthday” when I came into the reading room this afternoon, even though such events were recorded on the
league calendar. Trying not to feel peevish, I studied the brigadier’s upraised hand.
“I vote yes,” I said impulsively through a dizzying haze of excitement at the prospect of meeting in the not-too-distant, radiantly rosy future, the man who was every woman’s fantasy come to life. For I knew he would come. His acceptance of our invitation was written in the stars that shone in my eyes. Karisma would ride into my life in a snow-white limousine, trailing clouds of glory. His tousled mane of hair would highlight his noble cheekbones. His achingly kissable mouth would ease into a smile that would light up his fine eyes when he caught his first glimpse of me standing modestly in the background, my hair escaping from its chignon to frame a face made instantly beautiful. “My angel,” he would whisper, the words wrenched from the very depths of his being, “where have you been all my life?”
“The motion is carried on the basis that we have only one dissenter.” Brigadier Lester-Smith looked disappointedly down the table at Gladstone Spike, who had not ceased clicking away with his needles during the vote.
“I understand, old girl—” Sir Robert hastily corrected himself. “I mean, old chap! Being married to a clergywoman, you probably don’t think much of Karisma or the penny-dreadful love stories for which he struts his stuff. Pretty torrid reading some of them, what! what! Picked up one the other day that m’daughter-in-law had her nose in all evening. By some woman called Parrish, if I remember rightly, with a fa-de-da first name such as Dahlia or the like. But I don’t suppose names like Doris or Dorothy sell those kind of books! The one I thumbed through, just to see what had Pamela all fired up, was steamy enough to make m’moustache curl! The Count of God-Knows-Where was doing things to his lady love under the silk sheets that I prefer not discuss in mixed company.”
Mrs. Dovedale shook her head and attempted to look shocked. “They are not all like that, truly, Sir Robert. The Regency romances I read are always about young ladies of quality who are pitifully unprepared for the revelations of the wedding night and often flee in terror when the groom presents them with something other than a rose.”
Brigadier Lester-Smith, the perennial bachelor, blushed to the roots of his greying ginger hair; and Gladstone Spike finally spoke. “It is lovely of you”—here he smiled at Sir Robert and Mrs. Dovedale—“to be concerned about my feelings. But it is not a distaste for these novels that makes it impossible for me to vote along with the rest of you. There are personal reasons for my decision. May we leave it at that?” His face had turned decidedly pale and his fingers shook as he returned to his knitting. Of course Gladstone did not want to find himself caught up in an event that would bring swarms of reporters and cameramen to Chitterton Fells within weeks, or days, of his returning from hospital a new woman. But, sadly, there were other interests than his at stake. The Chitterton Fells Library League had voiced almost unanimously their desire to take extraordinary steps to honour the deserving Miss Bunch with a statue that would take Nelson down a peg on his column.
“And now”—Bunty Wiseman, who had been basking in the success of her Brilliant Suggestion, leapt up on her high heels—“why don’t we have Ellie take the bull by the horns and telephone Karisma’s publicity people and make all the arrangements?”
I gaped at her. “You don’t mean
now
?”
“No time like the present, what! what!” Sir Robert came round to clap me on the back, almost sending my chair under the table.
“But why
me
?”
“You’re the league secretary,” said Mr. Poucher. “Stands to reason you get the dirty job of grovelling on the phone.”
“But”—I was turning alternately hot and cold—“I wouldn’t have a clue how to get hold of the number.…”
“Then I must be lots smarter than you.” Bunty grinned impishly at me. “Because I already have it. This morning I rang up several of the publishers that put out books with Karisma on the cover. And finally a nice woman decided to do her good deed for the day and gave me the number.”
“Congratulations,” I stammered. “But honestly, Bunty, I don’t think I could make the call without fainting!
What if Karisma happened to be in the office and answered the phone
himself
? No, really”—I looked imploringly at the rest of the league—“I can’t do it.”
“Then I’ll pretend I’m you.” Bunty clattered over to the desk by the window and picked up the phone. “Saying I’m Mrs. Bentley Haskell of Merlin’s Court will have a lot more clout than if I ring up as myself.”
“Such misrepresentation could be in violation of the bylaws.” Brigadier Lester-Smith took the charter from his briefcase and began flipping pages with such zeal that the sound became a roar inside my head. Mr. Poucher began grumbling about his cows and his mother. Sylvia Babcock knocked over her coffee cup, and Gladstone Spike was knitting very loudly. Bunty gave the okay sign by circling her finger and thumb, indicating that someone had answered on the other end of the line. But I couldn’t hear anything more than the words
“Chitterton Fells library … would be extremely honoured by … humanitarian gesture.”
After what seemed an eternity, Bunty put down the receiver. She turned to face us with a stunned look on her face.
“Well?” Several voices spoke as one. “Karisma …”
“Yes?” I dragged myself out of my chair and took a couple of steps forward. Bunty looked as if she would crumple into a heap on the floor if anyone breathed on her.
“He won’t be coming to Chitterton Fells.” Her voice cracked. “The woman I spoke to was very polite, but she said Karisma is fully booked for publicity purposes at this time. I tried my spiel about the library ghost, but it was obvious she wasn’t interested. Well, pals, so much for my brilliant idea!” I’d never seen Bunty look so heartbroken.
The only one who could get his tongue round his voice at this tragic moment was Gladstone Spike. Wrapping his knitting around the needles, he said, “I hope, Mrs. Wiseman, that you will believe I speak with all sincerity when saying how sorry I am for your disappointment. But sometimes life does know best.…”
“If your sermon’s over,” Mr. Poucher interrupted nastily, “I say we adjourn this meeting. It’s coming on for
three o’clock and I’m not in the mood to talk about crocheting pot holders or to listen to the half-baked ideas the lot of you now think would be a way of raising the necessary for Miss Bunch.”
“I regret that I may have raised false hopes.” The brigadier hastily turned the break in his voice into a cough. “The words of a former teacher of mine come back to me at this moment. Miss Woodcock told our class: ‘Aim for the sky and you will reach the top of the oak tree, aim for the top of the oak tree and you will grovel on the ground.’ We”—he looked about the room with watery eyes—“aimed for the sky in our hopes of seeing the woman who did battle in the trenches of the card catalogue system cast in bronze, but we are left grovelling on the ground.” The loud snapping sound made when he closed his briefcase echoed with a lamentable finality. Bunty Wiseman excused herself on a sob, to skitter from the room.
“We can raise the money somehow.” But Sylvia Babcock spoke without much hope.
“And I’m the King of Siam!” Mr. Poucher thumped his grubby old hat on his head and plodded through the gloom he helped spread around like manure to the door.
“No use shirking facts: A statue would cost a packet.” Sir Robert stroked his moustache in the hope, I imagine, that the gesture made him look like an elder statesman. “As I understand it, we have five pounds and fourpence in the piggy bank.”
“An engraved brass plaque,” added Mrs. Dovedale, “would be a very nice tribute to Miss Bunch.”
True! But given our grandiose plans, it was a monumental comedown. One by one the Library League members headed down the stairs and along the narrow hall to exit through the Employees Only door into the alley. Who could wish to see Miss Bunch’s replacement at the front desk? Who could look at the fine box without remembering with smarting eyes her creed that an overdue book made one a crook? Brigadier Lester-Smith and I made up the rear of our group, and when we stood outside in the chill of the afternoon, he asked if I still wished to take a look at the house bequeathed to him by the woman whose memory he had sought so valiantly to honour.
“Of course I want to see it.” Impulsively I took his
arm, at the risk of putting a crease in his raincoat sleeve. “We can take my car. And on the way you can tell me whether you are thinking about investing in new furniture or more along the lines of sprucing the place up with fresh paint and wallpaper.”
“Since my retirement, I’ve always lived in furnished rooms, Mrs. Haskell. I don’t even have much in the way of the odds and ends—cushions and hooked rugs, those sort of things—that make a place a home.”
“I can understand that,” I said as we climbed aboard my car and I started up the engine. “One of the advantages of not being married is that it’s easier to pick up and move to new digs. So why encumber yourself with unnecessary possessions?” Remembering my visit to the vicarage yesterday and how I had tried to discourage Eudora from making major furniture purchases for the sitting room, I abruptly realized that if I didn’t change my ways in advising clients, I was unlikely to make any money worth pocketing.
The brigadier adjusted his seat belt and set his briefcase down on the floor as I drove out of the alley and onto Market Street. “Mrs. Haskell,” he said grimly, “I fear I have been guilty of seriously misleading you.”
“You don’t want to hire me as a decorator?” I nipped around a lorry, only to find myself behind a bus that pulled up at a stop to let off more passengers than ever crammed into the Ark.
The brigadier plucked at the knife-edged pleats of his trousers. “Indeed, Mrs. Haskell, I want your advice on the house Miss Bunch left me. But I wonder if you will wish to back out when I tell you that I have been living a lie since coming to Chitterton Fells.”
“We all have our little secrets.” I took a peek at his hair, which I had always thought impressively thick for a man in his sixties. No, of course that wasn’t it! The bus started moving and I bumped along after it in the wrong gear. Oh, the poor man! He was going to confess that he wasn’t a brigadier at all. Moved by the need to ease his embarrassment, I could picture myself spilling the beans about how I had met Ben through the kind offices of Mrs. Swabucher at Eligibility Escorts.
“When we first met,” the brigadier addressed his
knees, “I steered you to the conclusion that I have never been married. I did the same thing with all my other acquaintances in Chitterton Fells. The truth is, however, that many years ago I entered a marriage that ended as quickly as it began.”