How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (31 page)

“On the way to pick up Evangeline at the station, Giselle, your husband was so kind as to stop at the vicarage.” His marvelous eyes singled me out from the others, but the intensity that promised to stand time on its head was missing. “I rang the bell and knocked on the door, but there was no answer.”

“Not used to being turned away, are you, my bonny lad?” Mr. Poucher chewed down on the words with relish and paid no heed to the scorching glare he got from his mother.

“The Spikes were expecting company this weekend,” I said, and instantly wished I had kept my mouth shut. I might be wrong in assuming the visitor was in any way connected to Gladstone’s operation, but under the circumstances the less said the better.

“It’s a nice day, so they probably went for a drive or a walk along the beach.” Having dismissed the Spikes and their houseguest, Bunty recovered much of her perkiness. “Now, down to business.” She jiggled her camera on its shoulder strap and brandished her notepad under Karisma’s incomparable nose. “I didn’t come here just to gawk, honest I didn’t, Kris! I need to interview you for the
flyer I’m going to put in my hairdresser’s window and other places.”

“It is my utmost pleasure.”

“Now, let me think”—Bunty produced a pencil from the camera case—“what do my readers want to know?”

“Ask him if he wears pajamas!” Mrs. Poucher screeched, managing by dint of foaming lips and a reddened face to make this rather lackluster suggestion sound incredibly lascivious.

Bunty, the quintessential professional, ignored her. “Tell me, Kris, a little about your political views.”

“I
lorve
women.” With infinite finesse Karisma undid a couple of shirt buttons.

“And you would like to see more of us in key governmental positions?”

“I
lorve
women to be happy.”

“Excuse me, Bunty,” I said, “this is a flyer you’re doing, not an article for
Woman’s Own
, and it really isn’t fair to waste Karisma’s time when all you need to cover is the time and place of his appearance at Miss Bunch’s benefit. On the other hand”—I noted her quivering lip—“it might be a big help if you took some photos, especially ones outdoors.”

“That would be marvelous.” Karisma radiated enthusiasm.

I smiled back at him. “We mustn’t forget one of the reasons you came down here. Mrs. Swabucher made it very clear that a primary consideration was using the exterior of the house as a background in photographs.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“It’s a pity about the cameraman not getting here. You’ve lost the whole morning, but until he turns up, I’m sure Bunty will be happy to take some potshots at you.”

“She can take a picture of me in his arms.” Mrs. Poucher spoke with a grisly determination that brooked no argument from her long-suffering son. Without much further ado, the garden door opened and closed and I had the kitchen to myself for at least thirty seconds before the telephone rang. My expectation was that Ben would answer on the upstairs receiver. However, when silence did not prevail, I had to assume the twins were holding him
prisoner in the nursery. I went out into the hall to pick up the phone.

“Ellie”—Eudora Spike spoke in a breathless rush in my ear—“I really need to talk to you, if you have a free minute.”

“Of course, is it about the redecorating?”

“No, nothing about that.”

“That’s good, because I’m afraid that what with one thing and another this week, I haven’t settled down to mapping out ideas for your bedroom or—”

“Yes, I realize you’ve a lot on your plate, especially now you’ve got that man staying with you.” There was a pause in which I pictured Eudora gnawing her lower lip. “He came to the house this morning; Gladstone happened to catch a glimpse of him from the window and I’m ashamed to say we didn’t answer the door.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons” was all I could say.

“And I’d like to tell you about them, Ellie, but not over the phone. Could you come here, just for half an hour?”

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” I promised, and replaced the receiver in time to see Ben coming down the stairs with the twins at his heels.

“Sorry I couldn’t get that,” he told me. “Abbey was on the pot and Tam was hopping up and down waiting his turn.”

“It was Eudora. For me.”

“Anything wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” I leaned up against him, thinking how good such ordinary moments were. “I said I’d go round and have a chat with her.”

“Go on, then.” He touched my face and I knew he understood that Eudora, who spent a big part of her life listening to other people’s problems, sometimes needed to be on the talking end of the conversation. By going out the front door, I avoided interrupting Karisma’s photograph session or having to explain where I was going and being put in the awkward position of not offering to take him with me. It was such a shame when he was so keen on church that the Spikes’ particular circumstances prevented them from being up to welcoming him to the vicarage.

Passing the cottage at the gates, I stared up at the
windows and wondered guiltily if Gerta had recovered from last night’s terrors which, while they might seem far-fetched to me, had been very real to her. I’d been dreadfully neglectful in not going down to see how she was doing. It was no excuse that I’d hardly had a free moment to breathe. I vowed that on my way back from the vicarage I would knock on the door, and if there was no answer, I’d go in through a window.

Eudora saved me from opting for that form of entry at the vicarage by opening the door before I rang the bell.

“It’s so good of you to come, Ellie. I don’t know when I’ve been more in need of a friend.” She gave me a hug and bustled me into the comfortably old-fashioned sitting room. “You must have noticed I wasn’t myself the other day when you came over to talk about the redecorating.”

“I did sense that something was a little off kilter, but I hoped there wasn’t anything seriously wrong. We are … that is,” I stammered, “Ben and I are so very fond of you and Gladstone.”

“Thank you, dear.” Eudora gave a wan smile as she gestured for me to sit next to the table set out with coffee for two and one of her husband’s sponge cakes. “It’s about Gladstone that I wish to speak to you.” She took the chair across from mine and stared into the empty fireplace.

“I thought that might be it,” I said.

“I’m usually a very private person, Ellie, but this does involve you.”

“It does?” My hand set down the coffee cup it had just picked up.

“In that it involves your husband.” Eudora turned towards me with a determinedly cheerful look on her face. “You see, Ellie, Gladstone has always admired Ben very much, they share the same interest in cooking, and that’s a special bond between two men. Then, when your cousin Vanessa fainted in church and Ben picked her up so effortlessly, Gladstone told me he realized for the first time how incredibly handsome Ben was and that there were no two ways about it, this was the man he wanted. And he wasn’t going to settle for anyone else.”

“Well, he can’t have Ben!” I flashed back without a thought for poor Eudora’s anguish.

“And there was me thinking”—she gave an embarrassed laugh—“that you’d be rather tickled by the idea.”

“Oh, really?” I was growing just the least bit annoyed. Surely it was one thing for a woman to support her husband in his decision to have a sex-change operation, and quite another to encourage him to latch on to a friend’s husband.

“You’re not a fuddy-duddy like me, Ellie, and I know you love romance novels, so please forgive me if I mistakenly thought you’d enjoy seeing Ben on the cover of what Gladstone’s publishers believe will be a runaway best seller.” She smiled benignly at me.

“I’m very confused,” I said, and proved the point by starting to stand up just as I went to sit down. “Could you please start at the beginning, Eudora, and tell me who your husband is when he isn’t baking the perfect sponge cake or putting together the parish bulletin?”

“Zinnia Parrish!” Ben was sitting on the edge of the bed the next morning, pulling on his socks. “What sort of name is that for a man?”

“One with lots of sales appeal.” I gave up on brushing my hair, which wasn’t any great sacrifice seeing I had been slacking off on this exercise routine recently and was so badly out of shape that fifty strokes would have done me in. “She—er—Gladstone Spike is one of today’s most popular romance writers. His—
her
books sell by the ton.”

“We’re talking about paperbacks, right?” Ben took my place at the dressing table and proceeded to comb his hair without breaking a sweat. Neither of us had to rush what we were doing, because Vanessa, intent on changing her image, had volunteered to take care of the twins until we came downstairs.

“There’s no need to turn up your nose,” I told the man in the mirror crossly.

“I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.”

“Yes, you were. People do that all the time. They dismiss romances as not being real books and carry on as though the definition of a literary masterpiece is a novel written in the present tense about people who spend six hundred pages contemplating their navels and that sells all
of three copies because only the supremely intelligent can get through the bloody title.”

“Ellie”—my husband came up behind me and pressed his hands over my mouth—“I was not belittling Gladstone Spike’s writing career. When you and I first met I was trying to write a spy novel, remember? And we know how that turned out.”

“You sold a cookery book”—I wriggled away from him—“and a very good one it was too.”

“Thanks, sweetheart, but I seriously doubt it kept anyone up all night turning the pages to see if the beef Wellington made it out of the oven unscathed. To be honest, I’m quite jealous of old Gladstone.”

Now was the moment to inform Ben that if he couldn’t have his name on a novel of his own creation, he might have the opportunity to show up on the cover of the next Zinnia Parrish blockbuster. But something held me back. And I rattled on instead about how amazed I’d been to discover that one of my favourite writers was our friend and neighbour.

“What amazes me”—Ben stood, buttoning his shirt cuffs—“is that you didn’t tell me about this yesterday; I would have expected you to rush home bursting to spill the beans.”

“On the way back from the vicarage”—I turned away from him and started spreading up the bed—“I stopped at the cottage to look in on Gerta. And she was so down in the boots that I spent the better part of an hour trying to persuade her to come up to the house for lunch. But she kept saying she couldn’t risk seeing Karisma because he looks so like her husband she’d immediately have a nervous breakdown.”

“It sounds to me as though she’s already having one.” Ben hung up his black silk dressing gown.

“I’m worried about her.” I finished tucking in my side of the bed. “When Gerta showed me a snapshot of Ernst I saw a heavyset bald man with a moustache and not a glimmer of resemblance to Karisma, whichever way I turned the photo; but that’s love for you. And it got me thinking. Maybe the frog didn’t turn into Prince Charming when the girl in the fairy story kissed him—except in her eyes, that is. So that for fifty years of domestic bliss, until the day he
finally croaked, he slept on a lily pad in the bathroom basin. And everywhere they went she introduced him as her tall, handsome husband to women who were petrified he would hop up their skirts and to men who vowed never to touch another drop of Scotch as long as they lived.”

“Rrribit-rrribit”
was Ben’s juvenile response to my insightful outpourings.

“I wasn’t talking about you. People are forever telling me how handsome you are.” After plumping up the last of the pillows I sat down on the bed. “If anyone’s the frog in our relationship, it’s me.”

“Now who’s displaying false modesty?”

“Well, nobody’s ever suggested putting me on the cov—”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” I smiled up at him. “I’ve gone off on a tangent, but back to why I didn’t tell you about Gladstone Spike yesterday. If you think about it, Ben, you’ll realize we never had a moment alone after I got back to the house. Luckily, Bunty Wiseman and the Pouchers had gone. But either Vanessa was in the room, or I was talking to Mrs. Swabucher, who couldn’t hide that she was down in the dumps over her meeting with Brigadier Lester-Smith. The twins constantly required attention from one or the other of us. And of course there was Karisma, who couldn’t be expected to stand around tossing his hair all day. It all proved to be rather exhausting, and by the time we came up to bed, I was practically sleepwalking.”

“It’s interesting about the photographer.” Ben’s voice was muffled by his pulling a sweater over his head.

“You mean that he never showed up?”

“Precisely. As I understand it, Mrs. Swabucher told you at Abigail’s that a camera session, using the exterior of Merlin’s Court as a background, was a major objective in Karisma’s coming down here. Lancelot valiantly defending the castle against the enemies of the realm. But lo and behold—no photographer. And I didn’t sense any major disappointment on either of their parts, did you?”