The Widow's Club (44 page)

“Eli never could face any of the little plays Ben was in at school. It was always the same. He would come down with stage fright just as we were leaving the house.” Magdalene had her hands on two chairs as if restraining them from walking away. She looked better for her day of rest yesterday. Still perhaps a little shadowed under the eyes, but otherwise recovered from the shock of her sleepwalking experience.

“Poor Poppa,” I said.

“Men don’t have our stamina. It comes of having one less rib.”

Millicent Parsnip knocked a chair against me, and through every detour of her apology, I kept my eyes on hers. I didn’t want to know if she was wearing her blackbird brooch.

“Such a pity Reverend Foxworth decided to go on holiday today instead of tomorrow, as he had planned. It would have been so nice if he could have opened the occasion with a prayer, but I understand his mother phoned and asked him to make the change. Well”—Millicent’s pussycat face spread into a smile—“looks like the big moment is almost upon us.” She moved off along the row. The curtains had parted a foot. I could see a man, or rather part of a man’s suit, going through. I could hear Roxie’s voice.

“Should you require an assistant, Mr. H., I’m your woman. And I won’t charge you more than a couple of quid.”

The steam from Ben’s voice reached me. “Move my salt! Move my pepper! Move an inch and I’ll kill you.” Curtain. Magdalene was rearranging her chair when the advent of Mrs. Bottomly obscured all else from view.

“A marvellous afternoon to you, Mrs. Haskell.” The chins swayed. “We”—she sloshed out an arm to include the rush of women—“we are
all
so much looking forward to this. And you, my dear, must relax and savour every moment!”

She was gone without a glance at Magdalene. She was sitting with her eyes downcast, her hands clutching her bag, murmuring, “He will be just fine, and if he isn’t, I don’t need to tell anyone.”

I was about to sit down beside her when I saw a young blond woman coming through the door with a red rose in the lapel of her silver-grey suede jacket. At first I thought she was Bunty. The height was similar, but this woman was strikingly beautiful, whereas Bunty was merely striking. Could there be any doubt who this was? Parents who name a child Angelica have something like this in mind. She saw me staring and with long strides, alligator briefcase swinging alongside her midiskirt, came over.

“Greetings! Hope I’m not frightfully late.” She had a slightly raspy, more than slightly sexy voice. “I’m Angelica Brady and you must be Ellie because this certainly is Ben’s dear mum.” She extended a gloved hand, breezily friendly. Then … bingo, her eyes glazed. Magdalene was half out
of her seat; was Miss Brady shocked by the changes time had wrought in my mother-in-law? Or was there something about me she found instantly repellent? I started to say how pleased Ben would be at having her here, but neither of us was listening. Miss Brady was staring into space—a space occupied by Sidney Fowler. The roses worn by each were as alike as two red roses can be. So were their facial expressions.

“Angie, didn’t my Ben tell you Sidney also lives here?” Magdalene asked.

“No, but I have only myself to blame for that.” Miss Brady’s voice could have been produced by remote control. “One of the first things I said to Ben was that I didn’t want Sid’s name to crop up in conversation.”

Sidney moved, but not toward us; he stumbled about on his heel and made for the exit door.

“Say hello to Ben for me,” whispered Miss Brady, then she too was gone.

“I’m beginning to be glad Ben didn’t marry her.” Magdalene sat back down and smoothed her skirt over her knees. “Shush. I think my boy’s performance is about to begin.” Out came her rosary. The last of the seats filled up and Bunty squeezed into the row in front of us.

Music flooded the room, golden, effervescent, like sunlight. At the piano in front of the stage was Gladys Thorn. Her dress had baggy silk sleeves, turning her arms into great moths, darting, floating. The curtains were opening. I tensed. The inexplicable behaviour of Miss Brady and Sidney was forgotten. Magdalene and I hitched our chairs close together, hands brushing as we placed them on our laps. Behold a narrow hospital-green kitchen. Behold Ben (my hand inched up in a wave), television handsome, behind a table lined with all the makings of a stew, his backdrop a surgical-steel cooker and sink.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.” Since last I had seen him, he had acquired a trace of a French accent.

Magdalene kept whispering to herself. “Shoulders back, son. Talk up, and don’t lick your fingers.”

Millicent Parsnip stepped out of the wings, a small piece of paper held out in front of her. Beaming, she read from her notes.

“Dear friends, it is a pleasure and a privilege to have with us today Mr. Bentley Haskell. His theme is Cooking
Under Pressure.” Mrs. Parsnip’s laugh got only one echo from the audience. Ben stood with a receiving smile on his lips. Miss Parsnip skipped page two of the notes. “And so, without any more ado, on with the show!” A round of perfunctory applause as, plaid skirt twitching, she exited. I bit down on my thumbs.

Ben held up a piece of meat shaped like Australia. “A stew by any other name is … a ragout.” The meat sailed up in the air. He caught it with one hand and began squirting with lemon and peppering away. “The integrity of this recipe is dependent upon a refusal to allow the beef to dominate the vegetables.” I stopped listening. Hands shot up throughout the hall. I sat up tall in my chair. My husband had his audience in the palm of his hand.

“Yes?” He arched a black brow, tossed a dollop of butter in the pressure cooker and set it to sizzle on the burner.

“Aren’t you going to coat the meat with flour?” demanded a voice belonging to the hand in the front row.

“No.” Ben blew out the word and slashed into an onion.

I sank down in my chair until my head was level with Magdalene’s. Would it be cheeky to ask if she had another rosary? The show went on, fired by commentary from the audience and rebuttal by the star. Ben was locking the pressure cooker handle, explaining he would now prepare a couple of loaves of hurry-up bread, along with a cinnamon custard. I was thinking, we’re on the home straight now, when it happened. A monumental bang.

My immediate reaction was that the room had exploded, but as steam fogged the kitchen, I knew. The pressure cooker had blown up. Ben! The audience was in a shambles, screaming, knocking over chairs. A voice from the kitchen bellowed, “Stay back! Everyone stay back!” The green accordion curtains swished shut. Magdalene was dragging me down as I dragged her up. I could see her mouth opening, but her screams, like mine, were lost in the hubbub. My hand tightened on hers, the rosary beads knotted between us.

A great weight came down on my shoulder. I wrenched my neck round to see Mrs. Bottomly, her face cracked in two by a consoling smile. “Relax, Mrs. Haskell, Dr. Bordeaux is with your husband now; so fortuitous that
he happened to be here. He will take Mr. Haskell down to the nursing home in his car, and if necessary, keep him overnight.”

Her eyes were sending me a secret message. I felt myself falling into nothingness. I didn’t understand, and yet I knew what was happening. I must get to Ben! Once that was accomplished, I could fight the doctor off with a carving knife. Magdalene was on her feet. “No one will stop me seeing my son. Didn’t I almost die three times giving him birth?” We were surrounded by a wall of concerned faces. My hands clenched into fists, but I thought better of punching my way out. I stood a better chance of making it if I ducked down and crawled. I was half up, half down, when I saw the hall’s entry door fling open, saw a man’s trousered legs, and a swatch of raincoat.

“Sorry to break things up, guys and dolls, but I’m from the police!” a deep voice grated. The circle crumbled. I clung to Magdalene’s hand. Later, I would experience exuberance, incredulity—right now, nothing mattered but reaching Ben. I yanked my mother-in-law past dozens of disappointed eyes. A husband, my husband, was about to be snatched from the jaws of death—otherwise known as The Widows Club. Whatever the explosion had done to Ben, I would put him back together—or love him the way he was. A sob of relief, he wasn’t in pieces! I could see my darling lying half on, half off, a metal serving cart. Dr. Bordeaux stood nearby, his fingers steepled out from his chest.

“Mrs. Bentley Haskell.” The man in the raincoat cut a path through the crowd. He wore a hat with the brim pulled low and had greasy black sideburns. “I’ve been sent to fetch you down to the station to answer a couple more questions about the murder.” He reached into an upper pocket, flashed a leatherbound square of cardboard and intoned, “Homicide. We’d like you to bring your mother-in-law with you”—he tucked the folder away—“to make things a bit more comfortable for you.”

I didn’t ask how he knew I had a mother-in-law and that Magdalene was she. He had a bulge in his raincoat pocket that looked like it could be a gun, and his teeth were rotten. I played along.

“We’ll … we’ll have to take my husband home first. He’s had a cooking accident.” I moved in with agonising
nonchalance to the serving cart and reached for Ben’s hand. Thank heavens, it felt alive. Was that funny smell chloroform?

Dr. Bordeaux’s voice chilled the back of my neck. “No need for that, Mrs. Haskell. You go along with the policeman and I will take—”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” snapped Magdalene, “because I won’t budge from here without my son!”

The Raincoat Man swaggered toward me, hand in his pocket. “You’d best get your husband rolling, Mrs. Haskell. As for you, Doc, I’d start giving first aid to some of the others here.”

Butler! It had to be he, playing his part brilliantly. I had to crush down my elation, to prevent it bubbling out of my throat in hysterical laughter.

“Excuse me.” I addressed Mrs. Bottomly’s chins, my hands gripping the handle of the cart. “Coming, Magdalene?” The horrid faces of these women! Mrs. Parsnip backed away from me, her eyes immobile.

“Sorry everything went so wrong,” I babbled, thinking it prudent to pretend a kind of normalcy, but the possible interpretations of my words abruptly sobered me.

The menace in the hall had been so strong that I had been afraid that of itself it might prevent our leaving; once outside, I clung to Ben’s hand, trembling. We stood on the gravel path, the elms casting green shadows over our faces. A bee buzzed close to my ear. “What now?” I asked.

The Raincoat Man withdrew his hand from his pocket and with it a gun. He rubbed the barrel against the bridge of his nose, then pressed it against the base of my throat. “We take your car, sweetheart, and we drive away from the village.”

“So we aren’t going to the police station?” Magdalene pulled her hat down over her ears.

“Not within a mile.” He drew the gun back a few inches. The rotten teeth were very much in evidence. “Sorry, old woman, but you don’t get to drive down busy streets and toss a shoe out the window with a message inside.”

Something was seriously wrong with his speech. Not a wink, not a word that he was Butler. Ben made a grunting noise and his arm lolled off the cart. I prayed he wouldn’t
wake up. This rescue was deteriorating with every step. Silently, Magdalene got into the back seat of the Heinz. The Raincoat Man watched with a sardonic smirk as I manoeuvered Ben, by means of a modified fireman’s carry, alongside her.

“Well, Reggie Patterson,” my mother-in-law snipped. “I must say this is a lot better than knowing you were out there somewhere, watching. You nasty boy. And don’t go taking on airs thinking I’m frightened. What, me frightened of anyone as stupid as you? I remember well when you used to come and collect your father’s rents. It was said up and down the street that all his money couldn’t do for you what nature hadn’t. You’re stupid and a coward!”

“No, I ain’t.”

Magdalene’s lips ruched into a smile. “Those that were short on the rent put their dogs out the minute they saw you coming—even Mrs. Rose with her Pekingese. And those who didn’t have dogs had their kiddies bow-wow at the window. My Ben”—she looked lovingly at the dark head on her lap—“he used to feel he’d missed out because we weren’t on your rent books and he didn’t get to send you scampering with your tail between your legs.”

“Yeah,” came a snicker. “Benny boy stopped laughing, didn’t he, when I shut him in the tater bin?”

The gun muzzle rested chill against my neck as I slid into the driver’s seat. The Raincoat Man was the son of the wicked landlord of Crown Street and Magdalene was being kidnapped, with Ben and myself going along for the ride. The Raincoat Man got into the passenger seat.

“Move it, sister.”

Please, Heinz, I prayed, do what you do best: stall.

While I fumbled with the key, Magdalene spoke. “I’d like to know, Reggie, why you never showed after luring me to the churchyard at dead of night?” She gave a sarcastic little laugh. “Did something better turn up?”

The damn motor throbbed to life.

Reggie pulled the brim of his hat low over his mean little eyes and stuck a home-rolled cigarette between his lips. “I dunno what the bleedin’ hell you’re talking about, which is because you’s trying to confuse me. But it ain’t gonna work.” He twisted around and tapped ash in Magdalene’s general vicinity. “I tell you I ain’t stupid. Me dad’s
gonna get
that
through his skull when I pull this baby off.” He tapped his chest with the gun.

We were through the churchyard gates, the stupid Heinz purring along as if newly minted from the factory. The breeze kept blowing my hair in my eyes. “Dad was all for putting the squeeze on old man Haskell when we got the chance to sell out all them scum-bag houses on Crown Street for a dozen times what they was worth. Some blokes wanted to tear them down and build a shopping arcade, but it was all nixed because that lousy little Shylock you’re married to wouldn’t part with his shop. The trouble with Dad is he don’t think
big
. He made a couple of threatening phone calls and then got the wind up his pants when your coloured shop assistant rung back and told him, in that plummy voice of his—just like he was spouting poetry, to pack it in. Dad carried on like he’d been fixed with the evil eye.”