“She told me she hit him with the poker.”
“That’s my point, Mrs. H.” Her smile was complacent. “It’s never the same story twice. So if the police aren’t lying awake nights wondering if they should dig up every tree within a mile of Tall Chimneys, I don’t for the life of me know why you’re all worked up over the ramblings of a batty old woman.”
“There was something …” I rose in order to get a better view of the twins. “Something bleak and oppressive about the garden and outlying woods even in daylight when Ben and I went on that picnic. Now, I suppose”—bending to pick up a toy fire engine that shot across the floor and threatened to cut me off at the ankles—“that could be because the house belonged to Hector Rigglesworth and his bevy of spinster daughters. Although I really had made up my mind that all that ghost business was a load of superstitious bunk.” I handed the toy back to Tam.
“It won’t do to let our imaginations run away with us.” Mrs. Malloy got to her feet and smoothed down the bosom of her taffeta frock. “But there’s no call to hang your head, my duck, seeing you’re not the only one who could be guilty on that score.”
“You mean you’ve been indulging in your own fantasies when it comes to Sylvia Babcock?”
“I wasn’t thinking about her, Mrs. H., but I stand by me suspicions. Mark my words, all that nervy business and squealing if a speck of dust shows up in her kitchen is a put-up job. Hard as nails, that’s what she is underneath them soppy pin curls of hers. Stuffing her victims with cream buns and suet puddings against doctors’ orders, saying they need to keep their strength up for sex until, whoopsy daisy, they drop dead. I read about a woman in the papers once who switched her hubby’s heart tablets for some other kind that wouldn’t do diddle for him. Trust a man not to notice. And I wouldn’t put it past that Sylvia Babcock to do the same thing, so she gets to collect the insurance money with tears in her wicked eyes. I tell you it don’t bear thinking about.”
“Then let’s not think about it.” I settled Abbey in the rocking chair alongside Tobias, who was industriously taking a nap, and ordered Tam not to step on the runners and send his earthly companions hurtling towards the ceiling. “Let’s just forget about Sylvia Babcock, Mrs. Malloy.”
“Who brought up the woman’s name?” She sounded seriously miffed. “What I was about to say—before
someone
got us off track—is that perhaps my George let his imagination run away with him about Karisma making advances to Vanessa. I don’t suppose there was nothing personal, seeing as the man’s made a career for himself turning women’s knees to jelly.”
“He kissed my hand,” I said. (I had to tell someone.)
“Well, there you are!” Mrs. Malloy need not have made it abundantly clear there could be no further doubt that Karisma was just fulfilling his professional obligations the previous evening. “I’ll bet you went all fluttery inside. And if he’d unbuttoned his shirt, Mrs. H., you’d have thought he was proposing marriage.”
I was about to argue that point, when the garden door opened and in came the Love God himself, followed by Ben and Mrs. Swabucher. Immediately the kitchen shrank to half its size. The curtains quivered at the open windows, and they weren’t the only ones. Neither the book jackets on which he had appeared nor my meeting with him the night before had fully prepared me for the man in broad daylight. He was an awesome vision of masculine perfection.
Mesmerizing eyes and magnificent jaw. To put it bluntly: six-foot-plus of raw sexual power.
“Me insides are doing flip-flops,” Mrs. Malloy hissed in my ear.
“You shouldn’t skip breakfast,” I said, and realized the same could be said of me. Obviously the reason I felt as though a major void had just opened up in my life was that, with everything I had to do that morning, I’d made do with only one slice of toast and hadn’t bothered to put sugar in my tea. But this wasn’t the moment to focus on my state of being. Even allowing for the fact that standing next to Karisma made Ben’s tan look like a pallor in comparison, Mrs. Swabucher, despite being clad in her signature colour, was not looking in the pink.
“You have been on the go making two trips down here.” If I sounded breathless as I shuffled towards her, it was because I was holding Mrs. M. up by the armpits.
“I had a snooze on the train”—her smile was lacking in sparkle—“and it was lovely to be met by Karisma and …” She blinked in an effort to recall Ben’s name.
“Let’s not stand here making small talk,” said my co-host with a regrettable lack of savoir faire as he stuffed Abbey into my arms, forcing me to abandon Mrs. Malloy to her own two legs. “I’ll bolt the door while someone barricades the windows. It’s a pity we don’t have a rifle or two stashed in the cupboard under the stairs, but I suppose we can try and make do with Tam’s water pistol.”
“Whatever is he talking about?” My eyes went to Karisma, whose eyes had darkened to convey deep emotional perplexity.
“I think he is joking.”
“Then you and I have a different sense of humour,” Ben told him crisply. “Personally I see nothing the least amusing in having hordes of your female fans run sobbing and screaming alongside the car as we left the station. I thought at least two of them would throw themselves under the wheels, but I wasn’t prepared for the ones who leapt into their own vehicles, or grabbed some luckless person’s ignition keys and continued the chase all the way to our gates.”
“I
lorve
these women.” Karisma tossed back his wealth of flowing hair and spoke into an invisible microphone.
“Always it is my wish to bring joy into their lives, but my guardian angel”—here he looked with a softening of the eyes and mouth at Mrs. Swabucher—“my dear Evangeline had said not to do autographs before tomorrow at the library.”
“That’s right.” Ben hoisted Tam, who had been clamouring for attention, onto his shoulder. “Let the woman who wanted you to sign her underwear pay her five quid and get in the queue with the rest of Chitterton Fells’ female contingent.”
“I wonder …” Mrs. Malloy came back to life with a fluttering of the eyelashes. For a dreadful moment I thought she would peel off her corsets and present them with a bashful smile for the coveted signature. But I wronged her. “I wonder if I should nip outside and see if any of those hussies have had the bloody nerve to break into the garden.”
“You are a brave woman!” Her hand was seized and pressed to Karisma’s incomparable lips before I could properly introduce them and, afraid that she would collapse once outside the house, I followed her through the door and down the steps to the courtyard, where we had an excellent view of a row of faces peering over the hedge that separated the grounds from the road.
“They look like the beheaded wives of Henry the Eighth,” I commented, only to have my voice drowned out by Mrs. Malloy yelling at the top of her lungs that if the lot of them didn’t scarper, she’d let the dogs off their chains and then there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind about who was man-hungry.
“We don’t have a dog,” I protested as the hedge cleared in a trice.
“And whose fault is that?” Mrs. M. pulled out the neck of her dress and blew down it to cool off. “I heard from Mrs. Dovedale on me way to the bus stop that you gave the librarian’s woof-woof away for the second time last night to Mr. Poucher, and speak of the devil …”
“Heathcliff?”
“No. Mr. Poucher. That’s him coming through the gate, and if me eyes don’t deceive me, he’s got his mother with him. Cantankerous old biddy. In her mid-eighties and up until recently there didn’t seem to be no hope in sight of
her calling it a day. But I’ve heard she’s begun to fail, so maybe”—Mrs. Malloy looked positively maternal—“Mr. Poucher will have a bit of young life at last.”
Considering that the gentleman in question was past sixty, it was difficult to imagine him nipping off to discos when he no longer had to worry about being home on time or risk having his pocket money stopped. But before I could say as much, mother and son were within hearing distance. Not that this consideration inhibited Mrs. Malloy.
“See what I mean?” She elbowed me in the ribs. “Got a face like a hatchet, hasn’t she?” Regrettably this was true. Mrs. Poucher’s facial features had enough sharp edges to do serious bodily harm. “And just wait till the old bat opens her mouth.” Mrs. M. was not about to close her own. “That voice of hers makes a dentist’s drill sound like a canary.”
“Shush,” I said, and had to immediately convert my glower into a welcoming smile as the Pouchers reached us and greetings were exchanged. My guess was that I owed this visit to Heathcliff and I was going to be told exactly what I could do with my dog. But I was way off the mark. When I tentatively broached the subject, Mrs. Poucher actually worked her pinched lips into a smile. And if her son’s look of surprise was anything to go by, this was at most an annual event.
“Don’t you fret your head none,” she croaked. “I didn’t say more than a couple of cross words when my lad here brought that dog home without a by-your-leave last night. He’s a nice enough beastie, and with all the break-ins you read about in the papers it don’t hurt for a sick old woman to have a bit of protection. And I got to thinking as I was mixing up my morning enema, we can always put him out to stud and raise a tidy amount, leastways enough to pay for his keep.”
“He’s nowt but a mongrel, Ma.” Mr. Poucher spoke up with bleak fortitude and received a flinty-eyed stare that did not bode well for his being allowed to stay up and watch telly that evening. No wonder the man always looked so down at the mouth. Probably the only time he got away from home without being made to feel like an undutiful son was to the library meetings. And even then
there were occasions when he arrived late. Had he been joking last night when he had said he’d been driven to slipping something in his mother’s hot milk to knock her out? My eyes met Mrs. Malloy’s and read the message loud and clear. But surely it was one thing to think Mr. Poucher would have been justified in bumping his mother off years ago and quite another to surmise that an eighty-year-old woman’s failing health was due to his finally having decided to cut the apron strings once and for all?
“I’m sorry.” I blinked at him. “I didn’t catch what you were saying.…”
“That’s because he mumbles,” supplied Mrs. Poucher in a voice that threatened to take the roof off the house. “Never could break him of the habit, even after I went out cleaning and wore out my insides so he could have elocution lessons from a proper teacher.” A couple of chimney pots shifted sideways. “The money I’ve spent on the lad don’t bear thinking about—false teeth the moment he asked for them—and you’d have thought I was asking for the dome of St. Paul’s when I said I wanted to come and meet this celebrity that’s got everyone going in circles.”
“You came to meet Karisma?” I did not dare look at Mrs. Malloy.
“That’s what I was saying,” growled Mr. Poucher. “Ma’s been in bed the better part of a month, but she couldn’t get out of the house fast enough this morning to scurry over here. I had to leave Heathcliff behind because I was afeared he’d get winded trying to keep up on the way to the bus stop.”
“Come into the house.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “Karisma will be delighted to meet both of you.”
“I’m off home,” announced Mrs. Malloy. “George will be ready for a bite of lunch and I need to put me feet up. And if you ask me, it’s indecent for a woman beyond a certain age to get all worked up over a sex symbol.” Having delivered this thrust at Mrs. Poucher with the aplomb of someone who had not brazenly ogled Karisma fifteen minutes earlier, Mrs. M. took off down the drive. And I led the way across the courtyard into the kitchen, which we found occupied only by the man for whom millions of women would have killed to have as a guest.
Between kissing the old lady’s hand and expressing
vast enthusiasm at meeting her son, Karisma relayed the information that Mrs, Swabucher, having admitted to not feeling well, had gone to lie down and Ben was upstairs with the twins.
“Mr. Poucher is a member of the Library League,” I was saying as the garden door opened and in tripped Bunty Wiseman wearing an unbelievably short mini-skirt, a camera strung over one shoulder and a pad of paper in her hands.
“Sorry to burst in uninvited,” she caroled with blatant untruthfulness, and received a stony look from Mrs. Poucher, who understandably saw more competition in the blond intruder than I provided. Poor Karisma! It was unnerving to discover I felt sorry for him. Just how long could he go on tossing his hair and gazing deep into yet another woman’s eyes without feeling he was chopping out chunks of his soul and autographing them on request? Could the fame and money be worth the price? Did he wish for a moment that he could change places with Mr. Poucher, who stood ignored in shadows of his own making?
“I’m speechless!” Bunty was anything but as she pranced around Karisma, eyeing him up one side and down the other, eliciting enchanted smiles from him and venomous glances from old Mrs. Poucher. “Honest, Kris, you’re even more luscious in person than on the book covers or even the telly. And it’s a damn good thing I’m divorced, because I think we should get married. Just kidding!” Her giggles floated in the air like sunbeams set to music. “Although if you insist”—she moved in even closer—“we
could
have a word with the vicar and see when the church is available.”
“I would
lorve
that very much.” Karisma spoke with a throb in his voice and fire in his eyes, so that Bunty, having checked her brain at the door, might be excused for assuming that she had succeeded where millions had failed.
“Ellie”—she backed smack into me—“I want you to be my bridesmaid, but don’t spend a lot of money on a frock. At this wedding nobody will have eyes for anyone but the groom.”
“Don’t be a ninny,” I said before Mrs. Poucher could snatch up a carving knife. “Karisma does not want to
marry you. He wants to take a look at St. Anselm’s Church and meet the Spikes.”
“Oh!” Bunty pouted adorably. “I suppose I can accept that, seeing Gladstone is a member of the Library League and it’s only a few steps to the vicarage. It would be harder to take, Kris, if I thought you were a religious fanatic. Hairy chests are okay, but I do draw the line at hair shirts.” She studied Karisma’s face, apparently groping for confirmation that any marriage between them would be doomed to failure. I did not feel it appropriate to mention that Mrs. Swabucher had described her client as a deeply spiritual man who would wish to attend a church service while in Chitterton Fells. At this moment Mrs. Poucher unblushingly croaked out the revelation that she found God-fearing men incredibly sexy. Mr. Poucher growled something incomprehensible. And Karisma, who, it need hardly be said, dealt with people every bit as brash as Bunty on a routine basis, appeared for a full minute to be robbed of speech.