How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (40 page)

“Dogs are said to howl at the moment of death,” I said.

“Yes”—Mr. Poucher looked bleakly pleased at hearing his pet had done something right—“but the reason I wasn’t around to quiet him down was I’d gone down to the toilet. And when I found it locked—Mrs. Spike, as we found out, being inside—I went out into the alley to relieve myself of all that rotten lemonade.”

“I appreciate your tying up that loose end,” I told him.

“Mother would have properly given me what-for if she’d known.” Mr. Poucher sounded almost fondly reminiscent as he made this admission before trudging off home to Heathcliff and his new lady-love. And I drove home to Merlin’s Court.

Ben was waiting for me in the drawing room. We had planned a rather special evening of conversation and cappuccino. I had become quite accomplished at the frothing part after watching the video. After running upstairs to
look in on Abbey and Tam and coming back down again, I told Ben that I’d had a letter from Gerta that morning. She was very happy in her new job, working in a coffee shop very similar to the one she and her husband had operated, and particularly wanted to tell Ben that getting to know him had convinced her there were still some decent men left in this world.

He and I then spoke about Vanessa’s upcoming marriage to George Malloy. And probably because being at the library in Gladstone’s company had brought back the recent past, I asked Ben if he had any regrets about deciding not to do the cover for
A Knight to Remember
.

“None,” he said as he joined me on the sofa, “and I gather Vanessa feels the same way. It sounded glamorous to her at first, but when it came down to it, she didn’t want to take any time away from modelling for George’s company.” He grinned. “Also, there was the fact that her fainting spell in the church was due to her being pregnant.”

“I’m afraid you’re not being honest with me about your feelings,” I told him. “Didn’t you really want to be on the cover of a steamy best seller?”

“I was tempted for one reason only.”

“Which was?”

“That you’d see me as the man of your dreams.” Ben turned and cupped my face in his hands. “Am I that, Ellie?”

“No,” I said softly. “You’re the man I want next to me when I wake up in the morning, because every day with you is like a new page of my favourite love story of all time.”

Many thanks to my friends at the Peoria Public Library for their generous support. An extra bouquet of gratitude to Maggie Nelson and Jean Shrier for providing me with information on the library ghost, without which ingredient this book wouldn’t have been half as much fun to write.

Also I wish to thank my son Jason for leading me step-by-step through the dark labyrinths of my first grown-up word processor.

When she was three years old, Flora Hutchins went to live at Gossinger Hall in the village of Nether Woodcock, Lincolnshire. Upon first seeing the gray stone house with its turrets sprouting up all over the place, Flora had decided it was bigger than the cottage hospital where her mother had died, so it had to be Buckingham Palace. And when her grandfather came down the steps to meet her, looking so distinguished in his pin-striped suit, she was surprised he wasn’t wearing a crown because she was so certain he had to be the King of England.

It took the little girl a few days to learn the true state of affairs. Grandpa was not the King,
but Sir Henry Gossinger’s butler. But that didn’t mean Flora turned into a downtrodden little thing kept hidden away behind the broom cupboard door. When she got bigger she liked helping the series of housekeepers, who came and went as regularly as the seasons, to make the beds, dust the furniture, and peel vegetables for dinner. Grandpa wouldn’t let her help him make up the special recipe he used to clean Sir Henry’s prized collection of eighteenth-century silver, but Flora loved sitting with him at such times because then he would tell her stories about Gossinger Hall.

“Start at the very beginning,” she would beg.

“Very well,” Grandpa would reply. “The original part of this house was built in the twelfth century by Thomas Short Shanks, a henpecked baron whose wife, Lady Normina, agreed to let him go off and fight in the Crusades on one minor concession. He had to build her a house that would turn her eleven sisters green with envy.

“Lady Normina doesn’t sound a particularly nice person, does she. Grandpa?”

“That’s not for the likes of us to say, Flora,” he would reply firmly as his hands kept polishing away at a piece of silver. “The story goes that Lady Normina was tired of the way her less-than-loving kin looked down their knobby noses at her. All because her husband had provided fodder for every second-rate town crier in England, by being disqualified from a major
jousting tournament (plus fined a purse of gold) for galloping into the arena before Queen Eleanor had time to drop her hanky.”

“Poor Thomas.” Flora’s tender young heart was always touched at this juncture of the story.

“Sir Thomas to you and me,” Grandpa would say reprovingly. “He may have been dead for close on a thousand years but that’s no reason not to pay him due respect.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Then we will continue.” This would be said with a smile. “Truth be told, Flora, Lady Normina’s sisters weren’t the only ones she wished to outdo. In those days, kitchens weren’t part of the main house. And, bent on keeping up with the Ostaffs who lived two castles away, Lady Normina insisted her kitchen be within easy distance of the house in order that she might spy on the shiftless cook; but not so close that were a leg of mutton to catch on fire her dream house would go up in smoke with it.”

“I think I would have been scared of Lady Normina.” Flora always hoped this did not sound too much like a criticism.

“By all accounts she was a masterful woman.” Grandpa had usually finished polishing two or three pieces of silver by this time. “She didn’t mind that the other ladies in the vicinity called her nouveau riche and terribly standoffish! Lady Normina thought them all pathetic creatures and understandably jealous that the rushes on her floors always stayed so
nice and fresh. Her Ladyship had made a vow to her patron saint, Flora, that she would put a dent in the armor of any knight who didn’t remove his shoes before setting foot inside her abode. And anyone who wanted to spit had to go outside.”

“Did Sir Henry tell you all this, Grandpa?”

“Quite a bit has been written down, my dear. The Gossingers have always been great ones for keeping journals. But don’t keep interrupting me, Flora, or I’ll never be finished before it’s time for Sir Henry’s tea.” Grandpa often picked up a clean polishing cloth about now. “It isn’t hard to believe that Lady Normina’s pride and joy was the garderobe.”

“What’s that?”

“An indoor toilet, something most people-even very rich ones—didn’t have in those days, and so called because it doubled as a storage room for clothing, on account of the felicitous chemical composition of the fumes doing a bang-up job of keeping out moths. The word
wardrobe
, Flora, comes down to us from the garderobe.”

“That’s interesting,” Flora would say dutifully, trying not to wrinkle up her nose.

“The sisters were beside themselves—with happiness we must hope—at their dear Normina’s good fortune.”

“Is the garderobe still here, Grandpa?”

“Of course it is,” he would reply as he glanced up at the clock. “But it’s locked up now. Do get down off that stool, there’s a good
child, and fetch the chocolate cake from the pantry for Sir Henry’s tea.”

Flora understood from listening to Grandpa that Gossinger Hall had once been the last word in luxury, by the standards of its time. John of Gaunt was said to have visited there on several occasions with his mistress Catherine Swinford. And, in this latter part of the twentieth century, the Hall still made for an interesting place to view on the days it was open to the public. The price of admission was modest, only two pounds per adult and fifty pence for any juvenile who made a sincere attempt to look short and sufficiently bored to pass for under the age of twelve.

Making even better value for the money was the inclusion in the tour of a pair of headphones and a hand cassette, which provided an audio guide to points of historical and architectural interest. However, the sad truth is that whilst it wasn’t a bad place to visit, especially on early closing day at the shops, very few people who appreciated the comforts provided by even the most modest semidetached house would have wanted to
live
at Gossinger Hall.

Little Flora, with the ghost of the twelfth century Lady Normina looming larger than life over her shoulder, was very glad that Sir Henry, at nearly sixty, remained unmarried. She quite liked Mrs. Warren who worked in the tearoom-cum-gift-shop. She was fond of Mr. Tipp, whose job description was stable boy even though he was close to the same age as his master,
Sir Henry. And she adored her grandfather, even though she sometimes thought crossly that he loved the Queen better than anyone else in the world.

Her childhood had seemed to pass through her fingers like an enchanted daisy chain, all pastel colors and gentle fragrances. School in the village. Sir Henry giving her toffees and patting her on the head. Sunny afternoons spent rummaging for cast-off finery in attic trunks, so she could dress up and pretend to be one of Lady Normina’s handmaidens. And Grandpa telling her other stories about earlier times at Gossinger.

There was the one about Queen Charlotte paying an afternoon visit that ended with a terrible stain upon the family honor, when it was discovered that the silver tea strainer Her Majesty had brought with her was missing. The Gossinger heir at that time was a wild young man, up to his powdered wig in gambling debts, and it was naturally suspected that he had pocketed the tea strainer to sell at the first opportunity.

Flora spent countless hours hunting for the strainer in all the nooks and crannies she could discover. It would have been so wonderful to have gone running in to Grandpa with her hands behind her back and say “Guess what I’ve found? Sir Rowland didn’t steal the tea strainer after all! It was here all the time!” It would have been Flora’s small way of repaying her grandfather for making up to her all the
love she had missed by her mother’s untimely death. And for the fact she never seemed to have had a father.

Grandpa, she knew, would have been immensely pleased to have the Gossinger honor thus restored. But that wasn’t all. Holding the tea strainer in his hands would have been a magical moment for him. His great passion was the silver he polished for Sir Henry, which made it surprising, Flora always thought, that there was one story he would never tell her even though she was sure he knew all about it: how the superbly crafted silver collection he loved so much had come into the Gossinger family’s possession in the first place.

Flora never did find that tea strainer. And suddenly, as if she had gone to bed one night a child and awakened the next morning a young woman, Flora was seventeen. And before she had time to turn around, a big change occurred at Gossinger Hall. Mabel Bowser appeared on the scene.

On the fateful day in question, Flora had been looking out the window of the sitting room she shared with her grandfather when she saw a woman in brown tweeds get off the sightseeing coach and set foot inside the gift-shop-cum-tearoom that served as the public entrance to Gossinger. Why, she looks just like the reincarnation of Lady Normina, Flora thought, and a strange little pang of fear quivered up her spine.

Miss Mabel Bowser certainly had the ironclad
look of a woman who would send her man off to the Crusades without first packing him a lunch. And no one, including Flora, could ever have suspected that her heart was beating fast under her forty-five-year-old bosom as she entered the gift shop/tearoom. It was a chilly day in October, and Mrs. Warren took her entry fee money by dint of inching the tips of her fingernails out of the sleeve of her cardigan. Or, to be accurate, cardigans. Mrs. Warren was bundled up in at least three, and did not appear to be joking when she declared the radiators that lined the walls were for neither use nor ornament. Unless, that is, you happened to be a “bally” dancer and wished to practice your arabesque.

Undaunted, Mabel Bowser embraced the chill of centuries bearing down on her from the towering stone walls of the great hall. However, two women schoolteachers from her sightseeing coach were less than enthusiastic. They groused that their headphones would have to do double duty as earmuffs. Mabel was able to hear their petty complaints because she had declined Mrs. Warren’s offer of a personal electronic guide. She hadn’t wanted any encumbrance to bring her down to earth. Being a woman of substantial build, she walked on air somewhat at her own risk. Besides, the device would have stamped her as a visitor, and Mabel Bowser wanted to pretend for one glorious hour that she dwelt in the musty splendor that was Gossinger Hall.

From her childhood days in the flat above her parents’ secondhand shop, Mabel had yearned to be part of Britain’s upper crust. With this commendable goal in mind she had taken to wearing dowdy tweeds, lisle stockings, and pudding-basin hats. She had applied herself to elocution lessons with a dedication that would have pleased Henry Higgins no end and gave her sister Edna, who still lived in Bethnal Green, a sad little pang. But what does a woman whose idea of personal fulfillment is an evening spent at the dog races know about bettering oneself? Shortsighted Edna would not have bet a fiver that on that visit to Gossinger her sister’s schoolgirl dreams of moving up a class would be amply rewarded. But fate has been known to pull a few strings. For outside the garderobe, which was locked and had a “Keep Out” sign posted on the door, Mabel Bowser collided with Sir Henry Gossinger himself.