The Widow's Club (42 page)

Good. Now we come to the matter of the initiation fee. The Widows Club realises it is difficult for many women to come up with one thousand pounds cash. If you can, splendid; otherwise we ask that you make a contribution of jewelry—your engagement ring, gold watch, etc. The Widows Club does not discriminate on the basis of economic status. On payment of your fee it is required that you enclose a brief, handwritten application. This, along with the note you recently wrote to an advice columnist, will be kept on file.

Mrs. J.S.:

How and where shall I deposit the membership fee?

M.C. Member:

The current depository is the statue of Smuggler Jim in St. Anselm’s churchyard. The left boot contains a crevice ideal for the purpose. Please deposit the fee between midnight
and four
A.M
. during the next forty-eight hours. On the remote chance that you are seen in the churchyard, say you felt a need to come to terms with death.

Mrs. J.S.:

And then?

M.C. Member:

Relax and wait. You will receive notification of approval through the confidential column of our local advice columnist, Dear Felicity Friend. Mrs. Jane Smith, it is my privilege and pleasure to assure you that your husband will be detained on earth no longer than strictly necessary. I look forward to that happy day when you join us at one of The Widows Club’s general meetings and receive your membership badge.

Primrose was, I think, disappointed that I didn’t faint dead away or, at the very least, go into hysterics when she and Hyacinth entered Delacorte’s to find me in the most compromising of positions, inches away from Ann’s body.

“My dear Ellie,” she said, as she propped me against a bureau, “what a very nasty shock for all of us. I have for years considered bows and arrows one of the menaces of modern society, but, on the bright side, we must remember that Mrs. Delacorte was hardly a person you would have wished to keep as a friend.”

“True, but I didn’t kill her to get her off my guest list.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Primrose soothed. “This wasn’t a murder, it was an execution. Oh, the thrill, Hyacinth, of being proved right!—professionally speaking.”

I wished she would keep her voice down. I could not shake the feeling that the murderer might still be here, lurking behind a piece of antique furniture.

Hyacinth lowered me onto a chair. “I couldn’t agree with you more, Prim. We suspicioned (did we not?) that Mrs. Delacorte had used The Widows Club for her own ends. But there has to be more. She must have taken some action to precipitate this.”

I pressed my fingers to my eyes, trying to shut out the horror of Ann’s unflickering gaze. “Life is what you make of it,” she had said. “If you want something done, an obstacle removed from your path, it is best to go to the top.”
I heard myself giving the Tramwells a fractured account of my visit here this morning.

Primrose fluttered in circles like a moth. “Somehow Mrs. Delacorte discovered, or guessed at, the identity of The Founder. After you left her, she went to see him or her. Putting you up for membership would not have sealed her fate, so my belief is she requested that Bunty Wiseman be eliminated; perhaps she even put the squeeze on The Founder. But that is neither here nor there. Mrs. Delacorte placed herself in a very perilous position and it was decided she had to be removed. It most assuredly would not do to have members of the club stepping outside the club’s charter. Oh, dear me, no! The results would be murderous mayhem.”

“Absolutely,” said her sister. “But I feel very strongly that the swiftness of the response indicates a breathless kind of fury, due to the fact that Mrs. Delacorte’s desired victim was a woman and one whose husband she coveted. We have much to discuss—why we are all here, for instance—but now we must do the courteous thing and telephone the constabulary.”

“Not for a few minutes, please. I have something I must retrieve from Ann’s bag.” I pried myself out of the chair.

“Dear me, of course!” fluted Primrose. “The note you wrote to Dear Felicity Friend! Who is, as Hyacinth and I have been meaning to tell you, none other than Edwin Digby, under the guise of another female pseudonym—”

“We can go into all this later,” Hyacinth interrupted, but Primrose swept on.

“Butler has confirmed the suspicions aroused, Ellie, when you spoke of the page you saw in Mr. Digby’s typewriter. The writing had the cadence of something from an advice column. And when Mrs. Malloy arrived at The Aviary that day she mentioned that she had seen him entering the …”—Primrose stumbled over the next word—“Gentleman’s. Her hints that she could keep her mouth shut suggested that this observation had been made somewhere other than The Dark Horse. Earlier she told you, Ellie, that she had cleaned the executive toilets at
The Daily Spokesman
and knew the identity of Felicity Friend. Am I making myself clear?”

“You are making yourself
long
.” Hyacinth tapped on a Victorian desk. “We must look for that note at once, although Mrs. Delacorte may have already passed it on. Indeed, she may have used it as an excuse for her fatal visit. Ellie, your contribution to our efforts is magnificent and I regret you have been forced to spend the remainder of the day aimlessly awaiting our return from London. When we arrived back at the Pebblewell Hotel we were told that you had just left the premises. We followed at top speed and spotted your car.”

“My dear,” scolded Primrose, “you were saying that
I
was talking too much. The police tend to be nitpicky over such questions as ‘When did you enter the premises and discover the body?’ ” She touched my arm. “We will say that you fainted, Ellie, and we dithered about reviving you. However, two minutes is all I think we can allow ourselves to search for the handbag with the note.”

“Are we going to tell the police about The Widows Club?”

“Indeed not. Think how galling if they were to step in at this late stage, solve the case, and scoop the credit. I think I would weep after the exhausting day we have had browsing in Harrods, waiting for Butler to get finished checking up on Edwin Digby’s genealogy at Somerset House. And all for naught. It seems Digby isn’t his real name either. Oh, and Ellie … Put your gloves on, dear.”

I went through the amber curtains sideways so as not to brush against Ann’s body, then up the stairs to the flat. I had to find that note. If the police got their hands on it, I doubted my marriage would survive, and prison decor had never excited me. As things stood, the police would surely put me under the microscope. This was my second body in less than a month. First the husband, then the wife.

Switching on the light, I lifted Ann’s coat from the chair where it had been tossed, but the bag wasn’t underneath. Hyacinth’s voice sliced through my jumping nerves. She was telephoning the police station. I could count on a minute at most.

How ironic to realise that less than half an hour ago I had
wanted
to talk to the police. I had pictured a kindly detective patting me on the arm and saying, “Thank you,
madam, the boys and I will get right on it.” Alas, how a corpse alters the case. Now I pictured a different look on the inspector’s face as I babbled away about a widows club while Ann’s body was pinned to a wall. I
had
to find that note.

The scream of the sirens ripped into my head just as I discovered Ann’s black suede bag on a bookcase. Hands shaking, I snapped open the clasp. Comb, mirror, purse, cheque book, oh, please … My fingers were stiffening up. But there it was, the folded square of paper. I opened it just to make sure. Yes. I moistened my lips and placed it on my tongue. I always said I could eat anything. Then I flicked off the light and, chewing madly, stumbled down the stairs.

I wasn’t alone in the narrow dark. The what-if demons pressed in on me. What if Ann, even though she had not passed on the note, had mentioned my interest in becoming a member of The Widows Club? What if the nurse described me accurately enough to Dr. Bordeaux that he recognised me? What if I broke down under police questioning? I took the last step and edged the curtains apart.

Hyacinth was on her knees half under a table; Primrose was atop a stepstool.

“There, there, ladies,” came a comfortable male voice. “You can come out of hiding. You are perfectly safe.” The shop was crammed almost as full with policemen as it was with merchandise. I swallowed hard.

“Well, that didn’t go too badly, did it?” remarked Hyacinth. Primrose had driven the hearse around the corner from Delacorte’s. She now proffered a bag of extra strong peppermints, saying they would warm us up. I liked the way they killed the taste of paper and ink.

Didn’t go too badly? I sank low on the seat. Please don’t let Ben amble this way and see me! There was no reason for him to walk in this direction on leaving Abigail’s, and if he had any dinner customers, he was probably still at the restaurant. But the last hour and a half seemed to lead inexorably to the moment when I must break it to my husband that I had spent the evening with a dead body and the police. And he must be warned to brace himself for the newspapers’ gleeful rehashing of Charles Delacorte’s death.

The inspector had suggested that one of his men get in touch with my husband—“You’ve had some nasty experiences recently, haven’t you, Mrs. Haskell?”—but I had declined. I preferred to tell him myself, at home. A constable had been stationed outside the shop to disperse the crowd which had gathered with the arrival of the police and the ambulance. He was told to give out the information that Mrs. Delacorte was dead and that the till appeared to have been raided. Better that, the inspector had intimated, than a panic spread that a maniac killer was on the loose in Chitterton Fells.

“Ellie, I don’t feel that this murder can fully account for the distress and agitation I sense in you.” Primrose handed me another peppermint. “Tell us, my dear, what else happened today?”

“I went to The Peerless Nursing Home.”

When I finished my account of that little visit, Primrose ecstatically pressed her hands to my face. “So brave, so ingenious! And I do feel you should put aside your little fears about the nurse going to Dr. Bordeaux and confessing her stupidity at leaving you unchaperoned. Even were she so lacking in self-preservation, you don’t
look
like a Mrs. Heinz.”

“But if she gave an accurate description of my car …”

“How could she?” Hyacinth flexed her pencil. “Isn’t its right side an Austin, the left a Rover, the right door a Vauxhall? Let us proceed. You say Jenny Spender seemed to be remonstrating with Dr. Bordeaux as you passed the window?”

“Yes.” I pressed my hands against the back of my neck and rubbed my feet together to stop a creeping pins and needles sensation. “I
have
to go home.”

“We can all do with an early night, Ellie.” Hyacinth’s voice was reproving. “We have arduous days ahead. It is surely folly to think that the police won’t wish to interrogate us further.” She made another notation in the green book.

Primrose fussed with a button at her throat. “I do believe we have so far been a credit to ourselves. Was I not splendidly tiresome in explaining how we had missed an appointment with Ellie, raced in pursuit of her—without speeding, of course—and entered Delacorte’s just in time to see her collide with the corpus delecti?” Her eyes sparkled,
then sobered. “Ellie, you seem so constrained. Is it possible you felt obliged to tell the inspector certain small untruths and now feel guilty? For instance, when he asked whether you had noticed anyone in the vicinity of Delacorte’s as you were about to enter—”

“I didn’t see anyone; I saw a goose—Mother Goose. She was only a few yards from Delacorte’s. Mr. Digby must have been in The Dark Horse, and I wondered if she had seen anyone she knew to make her cross The Square like that.”

“You handled the entire situation commendably,” approved Hyacinth, her earrings swivelling.

“Given my growing reputation,” I said, “the inspector was pleasant. And now”—I opened my bag and took out the car keys—“before I leave, I do have something I must tell you. I can’t help you anymore. I’m a coward, not a heroine. Seeing Mrs. Woolpack changed things. She made it all real, and I’m afraid that if I go on attempting to infiltrate The Widows Club, something may go wrong. Something could happen to Ben, such as his name ending up in the wrong file.”

“Oh, what a dreadful thought!” Primrose reached into her handbag. “Do have a sip of brandy.”

For the briefest moment I was distracted by the enchanting little flask with the minute silver cup chained to the stopper.

“I do urge you to reconsider,” said Hyacinth. “Thanks to Mrs. Delacorte’s death, we would seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough.”

“One would like to think that the woman is at peace, but I rather fear”—Primrose lowered her eyes—“that where she has gone, her troubles are just beginning. However, we at Flowers Detection must always feel gratitude toward her because, in dying, Mrs. Delacorte showed us how to entrap The Founder.” Her silvery curls shone in the electric light. “Is it too much to ask, dear Ellie, that you display that nobility of character which we know you to possess and act as the scapegoat?”